Nguyen Tuong Van, the Vietnamese-Australian hanged in Singapore on Friday had an American father from the Vietnam War period. Van met his father for the first time in 2002, just one month before his ill-fated trip to Singapore when he smuggled drugs to pay off his twin brother's accrued debts.

The twins were born in a refugee camp in Thailand while their mother, Kim, was on her way to Australia from Vietnam. Nguyen stated after his arrest that he did not know his father until a month before he was caught at Changi International Airport in December 2002.

"He came from America to look for my brother and I," he said. "My mother married in 1987 to a Vietnamese Australian. M

Nguyen Tuong Van is now the first individual of American lineage to be hung in Singapore.

Condi Rice leaves for a trip today to four European countries. The New York Times reports she is prepared to defend America's use of secret renditions. I don't think she will get off that easy. Other countries are rightfully losing patience with our President's unilateral policy of kidnapping people, whisking them off to secret detention centers outside the U.S., and subjecting them to harsh interrogation techniques that may amount to torture.

The European Union, often more antagonistic to the United States than its individual member states, has vowed to press the issue during Rice’s visit. [German Justice Commissioner Franco]Frattini said the 25-nation alliance has “an institutional and moral duty to promote and defend fundamental rights of people.”
Even America’s closest allies are demanding answers. At least eight European nations have launched inquiries into allegations that the US may be operating a “ghost gulag” with scores of detainees shunted from one detention facility to another, mainly in the Middle East and Central Asia, via transit points in Europe.

This Japanese editorial sums up the flak Condi will face very well.

Update: 5/27/2009: Since this post was written, the state of Missouri appealed the granting of the writ and got the order granting bail reversed. The 8th Circuit reinstated Dale's murder conviction and the U.S. Supreme Court denied cert. America's Most Wanted will feature Dales' case Saturday, May 30, 2009.

*****

This is the best news I've heard all day. Dale Helmig, who has spent 8 years in prison in Missouri as a result of being convicted of killing his mother, may be out of jail as early as tomorrow.

His attorneys claim the murder trial was tainted by an incomplete police investigation, an inept defense and a prosecutor looking to score political points in an election battle for Congress. That now-former prosecutor, Republican U.S. Rep. Kenny Hulshof, has rejected any link between the campaign and trial. But a judge in September reversed the conviction after hearing arguments that a highway map jurors used during deliberations contradicted evidence they had seen in court while considered whether Helmig had time to dispose of the body.

The overturning of the conviction is largely due to the work of a law student at the Illinois State University Innocence Project which made a documentary about Dale's case.

John Amato of Crooks and Liars has a few questions over at Huffington Post for David Corn who reported on December 2 that Viveca Novak and Robert Luskin were friends, but wrote a day later that Viveca was just a source for Luskin.

I agree that Corn's article yesterday was just a Viveca puff-piece and disappointing. It also didn't solve any mysteries.

When friendship conflicts with reporting, it's not enough to state that you happen to know the person you are writing about. It's important that you also state your bias. Here are some examples from when I've been in that situation:

One of the five judges in Saddam Hussein's trial, scheduled to resume tomorrow, has stepped aside after reviewing a document showing that one of Saddam's co-defendants was linked to the murder of his brother. A replacement judge will be brought in.

Testimony is scheduled to start tomorrow with five witnesses.

The trial, due to resume at around 10 a.m. (0700 GMT), may continue for up to three days, the U.S. official said, with up to 11 witnesses appearing in all, although eight of those will have their identities concealed.

While further charges may be brought against Saddam and others, the current trial relates to the deaths of 148 men from the town of Dujail, north of Baghdad, after an attempt to kill Saddam there in 1982.

In other trial related news, a plot to fire rockets at the courthouse has been uncovered.

The Washington Post Saturday has an article on Viveca Novak and Robert Luskin that reveals Luskin told Novak Rove was not in any trouble in PlameGate over drinks in early 2004. Viveca reportedly replied that wasn't what she had heard and disclosed, almost as water-cooler talk, that she heard Rove had been a source for Cooper.

David Corn thinks he has solved the mystery. He presents Viveca Novak's side of the story. Corn also discloses he regularly used to play basketball with Viveca Novak's lawyer-husband.

The more I read about Viveca Novak and Luskin, the more I think it's a loose end and largely irrelevant. It's a last ditch, but probably irrelevant effort by Luskin and Rove to avoid a perjury charge. The real issues as I see them are:

• Robert Novak told Karl Rove on July 8, 2003, two days after Joseph Wilson's op-ed appeared in the New York Times, that Joseph Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and had a role in sending Wilson to Africa to check on whether Iraq might be acquiring uranium from Niger. Rove responded, "I heard that too."

by Last Night in Little Rock

Tomorrow's NY Times has a significant article online tonight about the scapegoating of Hurricane Katrina: In Newly Released Documents, a View of the Storm After Katrina. It started as soon as the water leveled out in NOLA, and Bushinistas were already finding ways to blame everybody but themselves for the lack of preparation. No plan, except plan to shift blame. Worked with everything else to be thrown at Bush for the last five years, so why not then?

The gamesmanship and political posturing were, in a word, amazing. The greatest natural disaster in the history of the United States, maybe other than the 1906 San Francisco earthquake (see below), was a political tool or weapon in the hands of those who consider politics bloodsport without rules.

by TChris

Does the FBI recognize any limits on its ability to deceive the public? The FBI planted Thomas Esposito as a candidate in a primary for the West Virginia legislature. Catching Esposito on a federal corruption charge in 2003, FBI agents used him to set up a vote-buying sting.

Esposito entered the state House race in January 2004, after losing his bid for a fifth term as Logan mayor. … Investigators believed that "if Esposito were to become a candidate for elective office, a virtual treasure trove of evidence could result," Assistant U.S. Attorney R. Booth Goodwin II said in a federal court filing last month. "The undercover investigation has yielded important results."

Esposito withdrew from the race less than a month before the primary, claiming he needed to tend to an ill family member. Nobody knows whether the alleged vote buyers would have committed their crimes if Esposito, desperate for a break in his own case, hadn’t begged them to take his (that is, the FBI’s) money. In any event, the results obtained — “charges against 16 residents of Logan and neighboring Lincoln counties” — can’t justify the FBI’s tactics.

by TChris

Career lawyers in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division would have moved to block the Texas redistricting plan that provided Republicans with additional House seats in the last election, on the ground that the plan reduced minority voting strength in violation of the Voting Rights Act. A memo reveals that their concerns were overridden by a political appointee who was more concerned with assisting Republicans than enforcing civil rights laws.

Alberto Gonzales yesterday defended that decision-making process as a mere disagreement among professionals. Yet, as Last Night in Little Rock reported here, career professionals in that Division have been bailing out of their Justice Department jobs precisely because their commitment to enforcing civil rights laws is frequently undermined by “disagreement” with appointed officials who put politics first.

by TChris

If a police officer doesn’t know why a suspect is fleeing, it’s reasonable for the officer to shoot the suspect to death and ask questions later. As you pause to consider the absurdity of that proposition, ask yourself why a government lawyer would consider it reasonable for an officer to shoot and kill an unarmed teenager who had just stolen $10 in a burglary. And then ask whether a lawyer who expressed that belief should serve on the Supreme Court.

As an assistant to the Solicitor General, Judge Alito weighed in on a case involving an officer who was investigating a possible burglary. The officer heard a door slam, then went to the backyard where he “shined his flashlight on a youth who appeared to be unarmed and who was trying to climb a six-foot-high chain link fence to escape.” The officer “seized” the kid by shooting him in the head.

In responding (pdf) to a media motion to unseal 8 pages of the Court of Appeals decision (pdf) upholding Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper's PlameGate supboenas, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald advises the court that he has no objection to unsealing the portions about Libby, but objects to releasing portions about others who have not been indicted and who have not disclosed the substance of their grand jury testimony or cooperation to the public.

The New York Times has this report on Fitz's filing. Armando at Daily Kos provides his perspective.

My take on who Fitzgerald is protecting with this filing:

• Reporter Bob Novak and his source
• Walter Pincus' source
• Bob Woodward's source
• Those who have flipped in exchange for immunity (Ari Fleischer may be one of these) or for lesser charges or a lesser sentence (e.g., perhaps David Wurmser and/or John Hannah.)
• Stephen Hadley, Richard Armitage and Colin Powell (Assuming they are not already included as a source for Novak, Pincus or Woodward.)

Here are the most salient portions of Fitz' filing:

Hearty congrats to defense lawyers Gerry Schargel and Jerry Lefcourt who won an acquittal today in federal court in New York for Murder, Inc's Irv Gotti (aka Irving Lorenzo) and his brother Christopher on money laundering charges.