Category: Justice

Pass the Popcorn, Wikileaks Again

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Wikileaks has now released about 700 documents on what is going on in the Guantánamo Bay gulag, and the picture is one of a completely incompetent and immoral process.

Cases in point:

Given the totality it’s not the documentation, it’s not surprising that the New York Times strongly condemned the whole process:

The internal documents from the prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, published in The Times on Monday were a chilling reminder of the legal and moral disaster that President George W. Bush created there. They describe the chaos, lawlessness and incompetence in his administration’s system for deciding detainees’ guilt or innocence and assessing whether they would be a threat if released.

(emphasis mine)

It is refreshing to see the editorial page of the “paper of record” excoriate our gulag in the Caribbean, but unfortunately, they don’t go further, and ask why there have been no prosecutions of the lawless incompetent torturers.

About Bloody Time.

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A US Federal Appeals Court has overturned the dismissal of manslaughter charges against the Blackwater (now Xe) mercenaries who massacred 14 Iraqis in 2007:

The U.S. won a bid to revive its manslaughter and weapons case against four former Blackwater Worldwide security guards accused in the 2007 deaths of 14 Iraqi civilians at a Baghdad intersection.


The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington today reversed the decision of a lower-court judge, who dismissed the charges because statements the men made to State Department investigators may have influenced the grand jury.


“In sifting the record as to taint of the evidence before the indicting grand jury, the district court made a number of systemic errors based on an erroneous legal analysis,” said the appeals court.

Basically, the State Department promised immunity to each of the guards for their statements, and this is what led the dismissal, and the appellate court said that the immunity of each mercenary’s statements applied only to prevented their use against that specific person, and not all of them, so the lower court had to refer to each indictment, and see whether the their own statements were used against them.

The lower court judge basically issued a blanked ruling saying that if Merc A said something that implicated Merc B, it was tainted, and the appellate court said no.

Hopefully this leads some of these guys to rat out on their associates.

You can read a good analysis here.

Wisconsin Election(s) Update

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In the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, JoAnne Kloppenburg filed a petition with the Government Accountability Board for a recount, which is automatic, and at state expense, because the margin was less than the ½% margin.

She also called for an investigation of the actions of Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus, who has been using odd methods, and generating odd results, for years.

I don’t know how this will turn out, but given that Wisconsin uses paper ballots, my guess is that Ms. Nickolaus will not look good at the end of this, because even if she isn’t shown to have engaged in ballot fraud, her history of incompetence is well documented.

Additionally, it looks like Wisconsin will be more than doubling its recall elections in its history, there have been 4 total in history, but now 5 recall petitions have already been filed against state senators, which means that there should be at least 5 recall elections.

I would expect a lot of money from the Koch brothers to flow in for both the recount and the elections.

Surprise, The Vampire Squid* is F%$#ing Its Customers Too

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The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations has issued its report on the financial meltdown, and among other things, they say that Goldman Sachs deliberately misinformed its customers so that it could bet against them and lied to Congress.

Of course, there won’t be any prosecutions, even though the behavior is so egregious that the New York Times has has started to wonder why there have been no prosecutions. (This is a serious article, about 4000 words long, not a throw away comment in an OP/Ed)

Of course, Matt Taibbi, and the rest of us have been asking this question for months.

The answer is that it’s because they own us, or at the very least, they own Barack “The Worst Constitutional Law Professor Ever” Obama, Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner, and Eric “Place” Holder, which comes to the same damn thing.

When this sort of fraud goes investigated and unpunished, it becomes the social norm, and metastasizes.

*Alas, I cannot claim credit for the bon mot describing Goldman Sachs as a, “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” This was coined by the great Matt Taibbi, in his article on the massive criminal conspiracy investment firm, The Great American Bubble Machine.

What a Pathetic Excuse for an Advocacy Group

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I was watching Maddow, and she had Terry O’Neill, the President of NOW on to discuss the spate of anti-abortion laws coming out of the wingnut legislatures, and O’Neill basically said that she would not challenge these laws, despite their being illegal under existing precedent, because they are afraid that the currents supreme court will simply overrule Roe V. Wade.

So, because victory is not certain, she, and her organization, will win a court challenge, they have decided not to fight for abortion rights at all.

Conceding defeat is not an alternative to losing.  If you never contest the issue, you lose.

In conceding the battle in this way, not only do you allow states to criminalize abortions, but you prevent any meaningful political dialogue from anyone but the women hating nut jobs.

They are conceding defeat in the face of a possible defeat, and anyone who sends them money is an idiot.

When Your Old Constitutional Law Professor Calls You Out…

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And you are President of the United States of America, you have really f%$#ed up:

More than 250 of America’s most eminent legal scholars have signed a letter protesting against the treatment in military prison of the alleged WikiLeaks source Bradley Manning, contesting that his “degrading and inhumane conditions” are illegal, unconstitutional and could even amount to torture.

The list of signatories includes Laurence Tribe, a Harvard professor who is considered to be America’s foremost liberal authority on constitutional law. He taught constitutional law to Barack Obama and was a key backer of his 2008 presidential campaign.

Tribe joined the Obama administration last year as a legal adviser in the justice department, a post he held until three months ago.

He told the Guardian he signed the letter because Manning appeared to have been treated in a way that “is not only shameful but unconstitutional” as he awaits court martial in Quantico marine base in Virginia.

I don’t think that Barack Obama understands just how profoundly repulsive his staunchest supporters find his support for torture to be.

I don’t think that Obama wants to be a torturer, but he is constitutionally* unable to challenge his subordinates who are, which does not bode well in budget negotiations with the Republicans.

*Pun not intended.

And Now the New York Times Condemns the Sellout

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Notwithstanding their coverage of the foreclosure crisis, and the malfeasance of the mortgage services, which has largely focused on the hardships of the well to do (unsurprising given the nature of the New York City real estate market), the editorial board understands that there has been fraud and bad behavior all around and they understand that proposed settlements are sellouts to the big banks that service mortgages:

Americans know that banks have mistreated borrowers in many ways in foreclosure cases. Among other things, they habitually filed false court documents. There were investigations. We’ve been waiting for federal and state regulators to crack down.

Prepare for a disappointment. As early as this week, federal bank regulators and the nation’s big banks are expected to close a deal that is supposed to address and correct the scandalous abuses. If these agreements are anything like the draft agreement recently published by the American Banker — and we believe they will be — they will be a wrist slap, at best. At worst, they are an attempt to preclude other efforts to hold banks accountable. They are unlikely to ease the foreclosure crisis.

………

But the gist of the terms is that from now on, banks — without admitting or denying wrongdoing — must abide by existing laws and current contracts. To clear up past violations, they are required to hire independent consultants to check a sample of recent foreclosures for evidence of improper evictions and impermissible fees.

The consultants will be chosen and paid by the banks, which will decide how the reviews are conducted. Regulators will only approve the banks’ self-imposed practices. It is hard to imagine rigorous reviews, but if the consultants turn up problems, the banks are required to reimburse affected borrowers and investors as “appropriate.” It is apparently up to the banks to decide what is appropriate.

While it appears that the OCC, which has a history of acting on behalf of the finance industry rather than the public,has been at the core of the most egregious giveaways, it is also clear that the most of the machinery of the federal government, at least those portions directed by Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner, are doing their level best to ensure that there are no real consequences to what in a sane regulatory environment would be felonies involving people being sentenced to extended stays in “Club Fed”.

Instead, it increasingly appears that the Feds will be negotiating a sweetheart deal that will include provisions to make actions by the state attorneys general, and possible private torts difficult, if not impossible.

It’s nice that the “paper of record” has finally noticed this.  People like Yves Smith have been screaming about this for months.

Mortgage Settlement Talks Bifurcate

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The Feds and the state Attorneys General have separated their settlement talks with mortgage servicers and banks:

Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller said the reported side settlement between mortgage servicers and federal regulators will in no way affect the ongoing investigation he is leading along with 49 other state attorneys general.

Several media outlets are reporting that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Federal Reserve are engaging in talks with mortgage servicers and that agreements could be signed as early as next week.

“A separate settlement by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency will not affect our investigation,” Miller said in a statement. “The settlement neither preempts, nor impacts our efforts. State attorneys general will continue to work together unabated with a broad coalition of federal partners.”

My guess here is that, notwithstanding AG Miller’s attempt to come up with a weak deal, see Yves Smith’s coverage for more information, is that the OCC’s proposed deal is too weak for even him to follow up on.

Additionally, they may be attempting to distance themselves from the manufactured sh%$ storm about Elizabeth Warren advising them.

Of course, if you are an optimist about this, and I am not, it could be that the AGs realized that the two efforts were incompatible, since a federal settlement is primarily about looking at future behavior, while the Attorneys General are charged with investigating and pursuing prior and ongoing wrongdoing.

My guess is that there is some political heat being generated, both from the teabaggers who are crying, “leave Britney the big banks alone,” and people interested in property rights and the rule of law, who want criminal prosecutions of what is fraud and theft an an almost unimaginable scale.

H/t Yves Smith.

Barack Obama Just Came Out Against the Separation of Church and State

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In Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn, the Supreme Court ruled that a taxpayer had no standing to sue when a state provided tax credits that were directed towards supporting religious schools.

I was appalled, but viewed this as a result of decades of ‘Phant vote court stacking.

What I missed was the fact that the Obama administration, despite the fact that there was no need to because there was no equivalent federal law, filed a brief in support of tearing down the wall between church and state:

The Obama administration’s brief supporting an Arizona law which creates a tax credit system which substantially benefits religious schools is inexplicable and deeply disappointing. Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn (Nos. 09-857 and 09-991), to be argued on Wednesday, November 3, does not involve a federal law and did not require any participation by the Obama administration. Yet, the Solicitor General’s office filed a brief for the United States which argues that taxpayers lack standing to challenge a state tax program which subsidizes religious schools and that this does not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. It is exactly the brief that would have been expected from the Bush administration, but disturbing to have come from the Obama Justice Department.

A state statute allows Arizona taxpayers to receive a tax credit of up to $500 on a dollar-for-dollar basis for donating to a student tuition organization (“STO”). Arizona’s largest STOs (as measured by the amount of contributions) each limit scholarships to certain religious schools. The largest restricted scholarships are to students attending Catholic schools in the Phoenix diocese; the second largest restricts scholarships to students who attend evangelical Christian schools. Although the statute required that STOs not discriminate on the basis of race, color, handicap, familial status or national origin,” it did not specify eligibility requirements. Thus, individuals would receive a tax credit if they made a contribution to an STO and they could designate their money for an STO that supported only schools of a particular faith.

………

Since the Reagan administration, conservatives have sought to eliminate the notion of a wall separating church and state. It is sad and very troubling to see the Obama administration lending its support for this effort.

One of the things that you hear in liberal circles frequently is that Ronald Reagan would be too much of a flaming liberal for today’s Republican party.

Looking at Barack Obama, I’m beginning to think that my assessment of him as a Reagan Democrat is too charitable: He is a Reagan Republican.

The irony here is that Ronald Reagan was easily the least religious president of the past 50 years, of course.

Great, Another Recount………

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In the JoAnne Kloppenburg – David Prosser race for Wisconsin state Supreme Court Justice, Kloppenburg is ahead by around 300 votes out of the 1.5 million cast.

Prosser is clearly a horrorshow.  He’s cursed at and threatened the chief justice, he’s explicitly stated that he will enable Scott Walker’s political agenda, and he was part of an all-Republican ruling on recusals and campaign contributors that flew in the face of a US Supreme Court ruling, so I really hope that Kloppenburg wins in the end.

That being said, absentee ballots, Wisconsin has fairly liberal absentee voting laws but no early voting, could swing it.  Republicans tend to push absentee ballots hard.

The politically savvy thing to do right now would be to start calling for Prosser to give it up, the uncertainty is bad for the state, as is the cost of the recount, but I cannot bring myself to do this:  I remember these same arguments in 2000 and Bush v. Gore, and I cannot say them.

In any case, what’s good for the state, and what’s good for the taxpayer never gets in the way of any Republican’s quest for power, so why bother asking.

Another Day, Another Phony Foreclosure Fraud Settlement

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In this case, it’s the Law Offices of Marshall C. Watson, who has agreed to pay a $2 million settlement to resolve charges of fraud:

A Florida law firm agreed Friday to pay the state $2 million in penalties for allegedly mishandling foreclosures — the first deal of its kind since the uproar over the issue began last fall.

The Law Offices of Marshall C. Watson was among the prominent law firms investigated by state authorities after major lenders, including Bank of America and J.P. Morgan Chase, admitted last fall that their employees had “robo-signed” foreclosure cases without reading them and improperly notarized some documents.

Investigations into these practices are being conducted on several parallel tracks. Besides investigations by various states, federal regulators are conducting a review of national banks. Attorneys general from 50 states have joined with the Obama administration to try to negotiate a broader settlement with the mortgage industry.

………

They added that their foreclosure notices were not served properly. In some cases, relatives with no stake in the process were served notices and the homeowners were billed to cover the cost of those actions.

The settlement does not include any admission of guilt by the law firm.

You know, after pulling this kind of sh%$ routinely, I would think that they should:

  • Pay more than the cost of a dozen of the houses that they have foreclosed on.
  • Have the state bar looking at pulling his law licence.
  • Have the Attorney General looking at throwing his ass in jail.

But I guess I am just a rube for believing that the rule of law and property rights meaning anything at all.

State AGs Rebel Against Obama Admin’s Attempt to Protect the Banks

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It’s interesting, first you have Republican state Attorneys General objecting to principal write downs as a part of any settlement, and now you have Democratic AGs saying that they are not willing to sign off on an agreement that increasingly looks like another sop to the big banks and mortgage servicers:

The proposed global settlement for mortgage servicer fraud and abuse, put forward by a working group representing all 50 state Attorneys General, received some high-profile dissent on Wednesday. Republican AGs in four states – Kenneth Cuccinelli of Virginia, Greg Abbott of Texas, Pam Bondi of Florida and Alan Wilson of South Carolina – objected to the term sheet that contains the proposed deal, which would reinforce that servicers follow the law, change some aspects of mortgage servicing and potentially create a quota of loan modifications and principal reductions which top servicers would have to meet. The settlement, the quartet said, “appears to reach well beyond the scope of our enforcement role, and, in some instances, far exceeds the scope of the misconduct which was the subject of our original investigation.” And they specifically reject principal write-downs as part of any deal, saying that it creates a moral hazard for borrowers who fail to pay their mortgages. Republican AGs in three other states – Oklahoma, Alabama and Nebraska – have raised their objections to the lead AG on the settlement, Tom Miller of Iowa, as well.

But Republican AGs are not the only ones with concerns about the settlement. Democrats in AG offices across the country find themselves uncomfortable with the deal, in particular the speed with which it is being ushered through the system and the lack of clarity over what claims they would have to relinquish under the deal. The opposition from both sides puts into jeopardy a quick resolution to the investigation, which is being pushed hard by the White House, possibly as a means to kickstart the ailing housing market.

You see,the AG taking point on this Democratic Iowa AG Tom Miller, appears to be a stalking horse for the Obama administration, which has bought big, into extend and pretend as a way to save the banks and the housing crisis, and you have Republicans who oppose anything that will help distressed homeowners, and you have Democrats who think that the fact that there has been no formal investigation, no subpoenas, and no specifics on what specific malfeasance that they would give a “get out of jail free” card to the banks.

The thing is, you need more than 35 of the AGs to sign off on this, and you need all of them from the large or hard-hit states (FL, CA, NV, NY, TX, AZ off the top of my head) for you to have a meaningful settlement here.

Yves Smith is right on her assessment of the settlement as it currently stands:

As we indicated, if this deal falls apart, or Obama merely comes up with a Potemkin program that fails to forestall state AG action, the public will be better served. The evidence is that enough judges still care about the rule of law that more and more bank abuses will come to light if the authorities leave matters to the courts.

I’m not worried about a, “Potemkin program that fails to forestall state AG action,” I’m worried about a, “Potemkin program that succeeds in forestalling state AG action,” because the issue is not paperwork problems.

The issue is that there is extensive, pervasive, and systemic fraud, and it is not just against the homeowners, but it is promulgated against the holders of the mortgage backed securities as well, who lose as the servicers rake in big fees during a foreclosure.

Should the Obama administration once again choose Wall Street over Main Street, and use supremacy claims like those favored by the thoroughly corrupt OCC to prevent investigations, we will all be worse off, and not just because Barack Obama and Eric “Place” Hold have made a mockery of the rule of law.

Without a thorough accounting of what has gone on, it will happen again … and again … and again … .

Speaking of Rat F%$#ing

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Brutal!

This ad is positively brutal.

The thing is, assuming that the facts as stated are true, this is not rat f%$#ing.

If David Prosser, who is running for reelection as a Wisconsin state Supreme Court justice, colluded with the diocese when he was a prosecutor to cover up a priest child predator, and to have him shipped out of his district, this is a legitimate issue.

But the fact that it’s an important issue does not preclude it from being rag f%$#ing.  What makes it not rat f%$#ing is the fact that it’s true, the Bishop’s archives confirm this removes this ad from the realm of rat f%$#ing, even if it is nasty.

Rat F%$#ing, It’s What Republicans Do.

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So, we had a prosecutor in Indiana suggesting that Scott Walker stage a false attempt on his life in order to gain political advantage.

He’s admitted it, and has now resigned as deputy prosecutor..

Josh Marshall of TPM asks whether this is is normal Republican procedure.

The answer is Yes.

Whether it’s Nixon’s Dirty Trixters, where his operative Roger Stone coined the term “Rat F%$#ing”, or Karl Rove planting bugs in his own office to create a mock scandal, or James O’Keefe’s deliberately dishonest videos, or this instance, this sort of behavior is a part of Republican DNA.

I used to hang out with Tony Rudy, now best known as a Jack Abramhoff associate, as an SGA Senate member at UMass, I was technically a “right wing” member of the Senate as a Mondale Democrat.* and this was the sort of stuff that the College Republicans did all the time, and when they got together in regional and national meetings, they talked about it.

With me, a Democrat, people like Greg Rothman, Rudy’s partner in crime in the student senate, bragged about such things.  They reveled in and bragged about their willingness to ratf%$# their opponents.

*The left wing was the “US out of North America” crowd.

Put a Fork in it, MERs is Done

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Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS) has been under increasing pressures for its legal basis (it appears that they never registered loan transfers), it’s corporate structure (a few dozen employees, and tens of thousands of “Vice Presidents” who were actually employed its clients, so it functioned as principal and agent), and its shoddy record keeping.

Well, MERS is now done.

First, it instructed it clients not to foreclose in its name, then Essex County, MA and Guilford County NC both filed multimillion dollar lawsuits against the entity for illegally evading county recording fees, and now Freddie Mac has said that servicers of its loan portfolio will no longer be allowed to foreclose in MERS’s name.

So, the PTB have come to the conclusion that MERS is complete sh%$, both from a legal as well as a factual perspective.

Of course, they knew this 15 years ago, when MERS was founded, but now they realize that he courts are recognizing it as well.

One question though:  Why is no one going to jail?

A Win on Civil Rights

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The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that a consortium of groups including the ACLU have legal standing to sue over the expansion in wiretapping powers passed in 2008.

The Circuit Court had ruled that unless a plaintiff could prove that they had been secretly wiretapped, they had no standing to sue, and the court has said that they do have standing.  It made no ruling on the merits:

A district judge in Manhattan had thrown out the lawsuit because he said that the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate they were actually spied upon and did not have legal standing to sue. But the Second Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, allowing the lawsuit on Monday to move forward.

It found that the groups challenging the wiretapping law, including lawyers and journalists communicating with people overseas who might fall under terrorism investigations, had a reasonable fear that their international calls and e-mails would be monitored by the government.

The district court set up a lovely “Catch-22”. You could not challenge the law unless you had proof that you were wiretapped, but the wiretaps are secret, so you couldn’t sue, and so could not use the courts to prove that you were wiretapped.

I expect the Obama administration to use everything but the kitchen sink to stop this suit, but sovereign immunity will be their first bite at the apple.

So Give Bloombert Your Papers, Mr. Bernanke

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The Supreme Court has declined to hear the Federal Reserve’s appeal of the court order directing them to turn over data on its discount window lending program:

The Federal Reserve will disclose details of emergency loans it made to banks in 2008, after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an industry appeal that aimed to shield the records from public view.

The justices today left intact a court order that gives the Fed five days to release the records, sought by Bloomberg News’s parent company, Bloomberg LP. The Clearing House Association LLC, a group of the nation’s largest commercial banks, had asked the Supreme Court to intervene.

“The board will fully comply with the court’s decision and is preparing to make the information available,” said David Skidmore, a spokesman for the Fed.

The order marks the first time a court has forced the Fed to reveal the names of banks that borrowed from its oldest lending program, the 98-year-old discount window. The disclosures, together with details of six bailout programs released by the central bank in December under a congressional mandate, would give taxpayers insight into the Fed’s unprecedented $3.5 trillion effort to stem the 2008 financial panic.

“I can’t recall that the Fed was ever sued and forced to release information” in its 98-year history, said Allan H. Meltzer, the author of three books on the U.S central bank and a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

Well, it’s about f%$#ing time for the Fed to be sued and forced to release information, Professor Meltzer.

I’m not sure that there will be much in the way of revelations in the documents, this has been proceeding for a well over a year, so by this point, the recipients are pretty well known, but this is an important precedent (or non-precedent, since the Supreme Court declined to rule).

My guess is that there is real law-breaking buried somewhere in these documents, both by the big banks and the Fed, but, we won’t see any prosecutions, because in Barack Obama’s Justice Department, prosecutions are just for whistle blowers.

This Is Not Criminalizing Failure

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The FDIC is suing 3 former WAMU executives for $900 million, which I call a good start.

Felix Salmon, who I generally find to be pretty good on such things, calls it criminalizing failure:

If the risks they took paid off, they would have been hailed as heroes, and the FDIC would have no problem with their behavior. There certainly wouldn’t have been a lawsuit like this one, since the FDIC has to show that it suffered damages before it can bring it.

I don’t like the idea of criminalizing failure. Banks by their nature are leveraged institutions which are vulnerable to runs and to declines in their asset values. There’s always a natural tension between managers, who are looking to maximize profits, and regulators, who are looking to minimize risks. But in this case there’s no indication that WaMu’s regulators, including the FDIC, expressed any concern about Killinger’s strategy. If they were OK with it, at the time, it’s easy to see how the executives considered that a green light to go ahead and implement it with gusto.

But at the same time, it’s unconscionable that these guys should be able to get away with what they did just because they did it out in the open, in front of supine regulators. They knew that they were too big to fail; they knew that ultimately WaMu’s liabilities (or at least its deposits) were being backstopped by the US government; and they knew that if they wanted to get their total compensation up into the $100 million range they were just going to have to take enormous risks and gamble with the money they had essentially unlimited access to at the Fed’s discount window.

(emphasis mine)

Two points here, the first general, and second specific to this case.

The first is that a doctor who is sued for leaving a surgical instrument inside you, is not a victim of criminalizing failure. In fact, there is nothing criminal at all about the lawsuit. It’s not a criminal case, it is a civil tort as the result of negligence, and it is completely reasonable and justified.

The second point here, is that what these guys did, relying on a complacent regulator, the thoroughly captured Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), a federal backstop of depositors, a complacent board, and an “I don’t give a sh%$ about anything but this year’s bonus” attitude to knowingly engage in reckless practices in pursuit of short term gain, should be a criminal matter.

If someone is speeding and driving recklessly, and runs down a crossing guard, they do get charged with a crime, negligent homicide, and these guys were speeding and driving WaMu recklessly, so perhaps, they should be charged with negligent bankicide, because, after all, in Citizens United, the Supreme Court said that that corporations were people.

CIA Mercenary Released After US Pays Blood Money

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And I mean this literally.

Under Pakistani law, if the families of the victim accept payment, the defendant can be acquitted, and this is what happens in Pakistan.

The fact that the US government had to pay several million dollars to the families in order to extract their “diplomat”, his status is actually indeterminate, marks a shift in diplomatic immunity.

Scott Horton notes that this is a shift in how governments view diplomatic staff, but I’m not so sure that it’s a change in policy as much as it is a recognition by foreign governments in areas of intense US interest that the establishment of sprawling embassies, consulates, and various satellite offices have nothing to do with diplomacy, and everything to do with placing spies in those places.