The Center for Public Integrity

LAHORE, Pakistan — In 1986, CIA chief William Casey had stepped up the war against the Soviet Union by taking three significant, but at that time highly secret, measures. He had persuaded the US Congress to provide the Mujaheddin with American-made Stinger anti-aircraft missiles to shoot down Soviet planes and provide US advisers to train the guerrillas. Until then, no US-made weapons or personnel had been used directly in the war effort.

The CIA, Britain’s MI6 and the ISI [Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence] also agreed on a provocative plan to launch guerrilla attacks into the Soviet Socialist Republics of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, the soft Muslim underbelly of the Soviet state from where Soviet troops in Afghanistan received their supplies. The task was given to the ISI’s favourite Mujaheddin leader, Gulbuddin Hikmetyar. In March 1987, small units crossed the Amu Darya river from bases in northern Afghanistan and launched their first rocket attacks against villages in Tajikistan. Casey was delighted with the news, and on his next secret trip to Pakistan he crossed the border into Afghanistan with [the late Pakistani] President Zia [ul-Haq] to review the Mujaheddin groups.

Thirdly, Casey committed CIA support to a long-standing ISI initiative to recruit radical Muslims from around the world to come to Pakistan and fight with the Afghan Mujaheddin. The ISI had encouraged this since 1982, and by now all the other players had their reasons for supporting the idea.

As the new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Michael K. Powell can draw on his experience as an FCC commissioner in trying to navigate the arcane world of telecommunications policy and the closely knit group of high-powered, multibillion dollar companies that dominate the industry.

Powell has had the opportunity to witness and regulate some of the biggest mergers in the history of American industry, as well as to develop regulatory guidelines for cutting-edge technologies, such as broadband Internet access and a new high-speed wireless Internet bandwidth.

But Powell has another experience from which to draw: On-the-job training with one of the biggest players in the game.

According to Powell's personal financial disclosure reports and a company spokesman, one of Powell's major clients at his old law firm of O'Melveny & Myers was GTE Corp., an "incumbent local exchange carrier" that held a monopoly on local phone service in various communities across the country. GTE merged with Bell Atlantic to form Verizon Communications, now the nation's largest local phone company. FCC spokesman David Fiske told The Public i that, as an FCC commissioner, Powell never recused himself from matters relating to GTE or Verizon, including the merger that was completed in 2000.

A key Commerce Department official could face frequent conflict-of-interest issues because her office controls high-tech policies that affect a number of telecommunication and wireless firms for which she and her husband have worked.

As the new assistant secretary of commerce for communications and information, Nancy J. Victory also serves as chief of the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration. NTIA is responsible for a number of key policy issues affecting telecommunications companies, including what is known as "spectrum management."

Meanwhile, her husband, Michael Senkowski, remains the lead telecom and Internet partner at Washingtons premier communications law and lobby firm, Wiley Rein & Fielding, where Victory was also a partner. Many of the firm's largest clients are keenly concerned with how the Bush administration chooses to address spectrum management issues.

According to a federal conflict-of-interest statute regarding personal financial interest for employees of the executive branch, an employee who "participates personally and substantially as a Government officer or employee" in a "particular matter in which, to his knowledge, he, his spouse, minor child, general partner . . . has a financial interest," can be subject to criminal penalties, says Title 18, U.S. Code, section 208.

There are a number of ways by which Victory or any political appointee can avoid such penalties, including making the government agency aware of personal financial interests and being cleared by the agency should those interests prove unlikely to affect the integrity of the person's decisions.

In addition, Senkowski, a member of the District of Columbia Bar, might violate conflict-of-interest rules set by the bar, as his and his firm's clients could be heavily affected by federal legislation on spectrum issues about which his wife will be advising.

A pilot Internet voting project to encourage voter participation by Americans abroad cost the Pentagon $6.2 million and received high marks from its director, although it delivered only 84 votes in the November election and failed to address a key security concern, the Center for Public Integrity has learned.

Details about the two-and-a-half-year project come as the concept of cyberspace voting is taking a beating. A cadre of experts, including a national commission charged with improving the federal election process and the Pentagon itself, is questioning its feasibility because of the inherent lack of security on the Internet.

The "Voting Over the Internet Pilot Project" was overseen by the Defense Departments Federal Voting Assistance Program. It was an effort to improve voter participation for soldiers and overseas workers. Approximately 6 million Americans live overseas but are eligible to cast votes in the United States, according to an estimate by the Federal Election Commission.

Americans overseas vote by mailing in absentee ballots, a time-consuming and, at times, frustrating process. A 1996 post-election survey showed that approximately one-fourth of all military voters said they did not vote because their ballots did not arrive in time to be counted.

Votes cast in four states

The Voting Over the Internet Pilot Project was used in four states: South Carolina, Okaloosa and Orange counties in Florida, and in Dallas County, Texas, and Weber County, Utah.

In Florida, where overseas ballots were a critical issue in deciding the presidential election last November, there was more interest than in any other participating states. Of the 84 votes cast, 52 were from the Sunshine State. Okaloosa County received the most e-ballots of all the voting locations with 38 and Orange County was second with 14.

Pilot project volunteers were members of the U.S. armed forces.

MOSCOW — Surprise, surprise.

I landed in Washington in the last week of June just in time to learn that Gazprom-Media boss Alfred Kokh was also in town, doing some more image-polishing. My first thought upon hearing this was: “That’s the end of Ekho Moskvy. He’s here to do damage control in view of the upcoming G-7 meeting in Genoa, to announce his firm intention to make Russia’s best political radio station even more independent – under state patronage – than it was before.”

Last Wednesday I returned to Moscow just in time to learn that five of the station’s editors and 13 of its best journalists had resigned in protest over a new Gazprom move to acquire final and complete control over the only independent national broadcast organ left in Russia. Hardly a coincidence.

Time and again, we must give credit to President Vladimir Putin. At the recent Slovenia summit with U.S. President George W. Bush, Putin conducted the finest counterintelligence operation of his career. He managed to recruit Bush, even as he allowed his American counterpart to think that just the opposite had happened.

Now I’m wondering what Bush is going to say as a eulogy to Russia’s free press. “I trust him until he proves different,” as the president explained in a post-summit interview to? Too late for that, I guess.

He’s proven different? Fat chance. Both administrations are in the heavy bargaining stage of a process that might be called “missiles in exchange for the Baltics.” The essence is that Russia will quietly allow the United States to abrogate the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, while Bush will not insist on expanding NATO up to Russia’s borders and will leave the Baltic states out of the alliance.

But the approach adopted by Bush – read my lips, and in exchange I will close my eyes on everything else including the demolition of Russia’s free press – is a shortsighted one.