[govinfo] GovInfo News 7-23-2007

- Unlikely Adversary Arises to Criticize Detainee Hearings
- Fish and Wildlife Service Announces Review of Decisions Influenced by Former 
Official
- Senate Democrats Back Webb Bill To Create Wartime Contracting Commission
- House Rules Changes
- New digs for old treasures
Patrice McDermott, Director
OpenTheGovernment.org
www.openthegovernment.org
202.332.OPEN (6736)
- UNLIKELY ADVERSARY ARISES TO CRITICIZE DETAINEE HEARINGS
By William Glaberson
July 23, 2007

Stephen E. Abraham's assignment to the Pentagon unit that runs the hearings at 
Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, seemed a perfect fit.    A lawyer in civilian life, he 
had been decorated for counterespionage and counterterrorism work during 22 
years as a reserve Army intelligence officer in which he rose to the rank of 
lieutenant colonel. His posting, just as the Guantánamo hearings were 
accelerating in 2004, gave him a close-up view of the government's detention 
policies.    Most detainees, he said, have no realistic way to contest charges 
often based not on solid information, but on generalizations, incomplete 
intelligence reports and hints of terrorism ties.    "What disturbed me most 
was the willingness to use very small fragments of information," he said, 
recounting how, over his six-month tour, he grew increasingly uneasy at what he 
saw. In the interviews, he often spoke coolly, with the detachment of a lawyer, 
but as time wore on grew agitated as he described his experiences.    Often, he 
said, intelligence reports relied only on accusations that a detainee had been 
found in a suspect area or was associated with a suspect organization. Some, he 
said, described detainees as jihadist without detail.  more [NY Times]

***
- FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE ANNOUNCES REVIEW OF DECISIONS INFLUENCED BY FORMER 
OFFICIAL
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced July 20 it is reviewing eight 
Endangered Species Act decisions that may have been influenced by political 
considerations rather than scientific conclusions.     The decisions in 
question were overseen by Julie MacDonald, who resigned in April as deputy 
assistant interior secretary for fish, wildlife, and parks after an inspector 
general investigation found several instances in which she pressured Fish and 
Wildlife Service biologists and reshaped their conclusions about species.  more 
[BNA-subscription required]
***
- SENATE DEMOCRATS BACK WEBB BILL TO CREATE WARTIME CONTRACTING COMMISSION
A number of Democratic senators have signed on as co-sponsors of a bill (S. 
1825) introduced July 18 by Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.) that would establish an 
independent, bipartisan "Commission on Wartime Contracting" to investigate what 
many of the co-sponsors believe to be contracting problems in Iraq and 
Afghanistan that have resulted in the waste of U.S. tax dollars.    Webb, along 
with Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), several other freshman Democratic senators, 
and Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.), originally introduced the measure as an 
amendment to the fiscal year 2008 defense authorization bill as it was being 
debated by the Senate the week of July 16. They then introduced it as a 
stand-alone bill after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) pulled the 
defense bill from the floor earlier that same day. more [BNA-subscription 
required]
Link: Copy of the bill
      Summary of the amendment including the latest co-sponsors

***
- House Rules Changes (H. Res. 6), 
http://www.rules.house.gov/110/text/110_Hres6.pdf

***
- NEW DIGS FOR OLD TREASURES: Library of Congress redeploys ex-Federal Reserve 
bank vault as a high-capacity digital archive
By William Jackson
07/16/07

Since the 1990s, just about every division of the Library of Congress has been 
running out of space, and the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound 
(MPBRS) Division has been perhaps the hardest hit.    For more than 100 years, 
the library has collected moving pictures and audio recordings, amassing a 
trove of more than 4 million movies, videos, recorded broadcasts and sound 
recordings "on every imaginable format going back to 1890," said LOC's Gregory 
Lukow.    The division is moving this summer into the National Audio Visual 
Conservation Center (NAVCC), in Culpeper, Va., a gift from the Packard 
Humanities Institute.     The vaults of an old Federal Reserve Bank facility 
have been remodeled to provide 140,000 square feet of storage space for 
irreplaceable materials, and 300,000 square feet of new construction has added 
conservation labs with automated equipment to digitize old recordings, 
petabytes of storage and a high-speed link to servers feeding content to the 
library's reading rooms on Capitol Hill. more

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