The days, weeks and months following my arrest were some of the darkest we have had to endure. I personally was subject to lockdown, strip searches, sleep deprivation, unsanitary living conditions, shackles and chains, threats, physical pain and humiliation.

It is important to realize the intensity of the government’s pressure on Mayfield. They were hanging death penalty offenses over him and generally terrorizing both him and his family. In this, the government’s investigation recalls the heavy-handedness and sloppiness of its anthrax investigations (see item 366).

Nevertheless, a January 6, 2006 report by the Justice Department’s Inspector General Glenn Fine, in a fairly typical whitewash characteristic of IG reports, found that the FBI had not misused any provisions of the Patriot Act although it noted that the government’s sharing of information on Mayfield to other agencies had amplified the effects of its “mistake”.

On November 29, 2006, the government settled with Mayfield for $2 million. It issued him an apology, and allowed his case challenging the Constitutional validity on 4th Amendment grounds of the Patriot Act to go forward.

With great power comes great responsibility. Along with understanding a lot about human nature, the Founders understood this. They knew from their own experience that there were plenty of fools and zealots who would abuse and misuse any power that was given to them. It is why they were so careful to make sure that no power went unchecked. Post-9/11, the Bush Administration went on a bender and with considerable help, or complicit silence, from the Democrats undid many of the simple lessons that the Founders struggled so hard and sacrificed so much to bequeath to us. Bush and the political leadership on both sides of the aisle thought they were considerably smarter than the Founders gave them credit for. What they did not understand was that they were the ones the Founders were warning us about.

During the investigation, Gonzales’ bad memory was much in evidence. He said he could not remember receiving a briefing on security procedures in 2001 and again in 2005 when he became Attorney General (although he had signed forms acknowledging that he had). He could not remember that a safe that had been installed in his residence when he was White House Counsel was kept on after he became Attorney General. He could not remember ever having used the safe or if it was approved for SCI materials. He could not remember an instance in March 2005 when an assistant tried to find out the combination from security managers because the Attorney General did not know it. He could not remember that he had forgotten the combination.

With regard to his notes describing the March 10, 2004 briefing (the same day as the famous Ashcroft hospital visit, see item 12) of Congressional leaders discussing Acting Attorney General James Comey’s objections to the NSA warrantless wiretapping program, Gonzales could not remember the security level of the materials used or if their security level had been marked even though he knew the program was “very, very limited access” and described it in December 2005 has “one of the most highly protected in the United States government.” An NSA official at the meeting confirmed that briefing materials were marked TS/SCI. NSA officials also confirmed that portions of Gonzales’ notes contained TS/SCI information.

When Gonzales was sworn in on February 3, 2005, he took the notes from the White House in his briefcase but could not remember what he did with them afterwards. He said he might have taken them home with him and left them in his briefcase which he did not always lock. He did not put them in his safe because he did not remember that he had a safe at home, and as described above the following month could not remember the combination to it anyway. He described his removal of the notes from the White House as “instinctive”. At some point Gonzales could not recollect, he put both the notes and the other materials in question in a non-SCI approved safe at the Justice Department which both he and his assistants had access to. While his notes carried no security markings but contained TS/SCI information, the remaining documents were clearly marked TS/SCI.

Gonzales did remember looking for the notes in May or June 2007 after Comey testified before Congress and finding them in the safe just outside his office. At that time, he made a copy of them for Fred Fielding the White House Counsel. Two White House Counsel Office lawyers who had been read into the NSA program and recognized the classified nature of the notes asked Gonzales in a July 25, 2007 meeting about his security arrangements for the notes. Gonzales said that they were the only documents he had taken from the White House and that he kept them in a safe. He did not know but thought it was SCI approved. Their notes also state, “he thinks he may have taken them home to look at and probably kept in safe at home”. But of course, as he told the Inspector General investigators he could not really remember. After the White House lawyers began asking questions, Gonzales turned over the notes to Steven Bradbury the Acting head of the OLC. Shortly thereafter, Gonzales announced his resignation on August 27, 2007 to become effective on September 17, 2007. On September 14, Gonzales turned over to Bradbury the remaining documents which made up the subject of the IG’s inquiry.

The IG report concluded that Gonzales had “violated basic Department regulations and procedures governing the proper handling of such classified materials.” The IG turned over its findings to the Justice Department’s National Security Division which, unsurprisingly in this Administration which protects its own, declined prosecution of Gonzales.

702 of the 789 in the sample involved commercial payments, and of these only 40 contained no errors. In other words, the audit found problems in 94% of the commercial payments it looked at. On this basis, it estimated that out of some $8.3 billion in payments “the Army made $1.4 billion in commercial payments that lacked the minimum documentation for a valid payment” and that another $6.3 billion did not fully comply with regulations.

The audit also found 53 payments of $1.8 billion in seized Iraqi assets made by Bremer’s Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) which were not “adequately accounted for and auditable.” In the most egregious case, the only information in a voucher for $320.8 million dated July 22, 2003 is “Iraqi Salary Payment,” a quantity 1000 (apparently referring to the number of employees), and the unit price $328,000 (the highly dubious amount each was supposed to be paid).

And it found 22 vouchers worth $134.8 million paid to Coalition partners out of the Commander’s Emergency Program (CERP). None contained documentation that the funds were spent for their intended purpose.

In other audits, the DOD IG found that in a sampling of $2.7 billion of $5.7 billion in construction and equipment transfers to Iraqi Security Forces that some $2 billion (or 74%) could not adequately be accounted for.

Now to be fair some of the money for which there is little or no paperwork may have been spent, if not wisely, at least for its intended purpose but a sizeable fraction was not and how much money was stolen or wasted we will never know precisely because the accounting system, if that is what you could call it, was so bad.