Oversight: The Coming Attractions

I'm a big proponent of timelines. They're a really useful tool, retrospectively, to connect the dots, to understand how, say, Carol Lam's firing might relate to her investigation of Jerry Lewis or Dusty Foggo. 

But now that we're in the majority, we're making the timelines. Which means we need to look forward as much as backwards to get our bearings.

So, as a public service (you might want to schedule some "sick" days, after all), I thought I'd do a timeline of what's coming. Note that most of these links go to PDFs, so click through accordingly.

March 23 Deadline for Condi to turn over (Condi apparently ignored this deadline–see her upcoming date with Waxman below)

March 30 (today!) House and Senate [correction--DOJ wanted joint interviews, but it appears only the House Judiciary is involved at this point] Judiciary Committees begin to interview [in private interviews --so don't look for it on CSPAN] 7 current and former DOJ employees on the USA purge; interviewees include:

• Paul McNulty
• William Moschella
• Michael Elston
• William Mercer
• David Margolis
• Monica "Five for Freedom" Goodling
• Michael Battle

March 30 (today!) Deadline for State Department to turn over information on problems with the DynCorp contract to train Iraqi police 

April 5 [House Oversight] Deadline for Fred Fielding to turn over information on the gwb43 and other non-governmental email practices (with interviews to occur the week of April 2) 

April 5 [House Oversight] Susan Ralston scheduled to give deposition on the White House role in the Jack Abramoff scandal; this will include questions on the gwb43 email server 

April 6 [House Oversight] Deadline for Josh Bolten to turn over all paperwork on MZM's contract to install furniture sanitize the mail in OVP

April 7 [House Oversight] Deadline for information related to DOJ interference in tobacco settlement  

April 10 [Closed SSCI hearing] CIA detention

April 12 [Closed SSCI hearing] National Security Letters  

April 13 [House Oversight] Deadline for Karl Rove to answer questions regarding the PowerPoint targeting Democrats and potential Hatch Act violations

April 17 Soon to be former AG Alberto Gonzales testifies before Senate Judiciary Committee  

April 17 [Closed SSCI hearing] Telecom liability act  

April 18 [House Oversight] Condi visits (ha!) Waxman's committee to answer questions on the Niger intelligence and all the other things Condi ignored from 16 letters Waxman wrote her before he got his gavel

April 19  [Closed SSCI hearing] FISA Modernization Legislation

May 17 hearing on the Wilson's lawsuit 

June 5 Libby's sentencing hearing 

A couple of observations. First, while everyone else DC is putting things on hold during next week's recess, Waxman and the combined Judiciary committees will be very busy interviewing people next week. House Oversight Committee will be figuring out why the hell BushCo appears to be doing business on its own server, while the Judiciary committees will be interviewing all of the people who think they know better than some of the country's top US Attorneys.

Also, note how complementary Waxman's work and that of Judiciary are. Alberto Gonzales' testimony on April 17 is generally titled, "Justice Department Oversight." Depending on what Waxman digs up with his request for more information on the tobacco case, Gonzales may find himself discussing more than just the US Attorney firings.

FWIW, I fully expect Condi to blow off her invitation to visit Waxman's committee on April 18. Meanwhile, Waxman sent a letter to DCI Hayden requesting more information related to Plame's outing, which will give us incrementally more information about how Pat Roberts' SSCI produced a politicized document to support Cheney's claims about the war. And I suspect that if Waxman pursues the MZM inquiry to its logical conclusion, we will learn that (among other things) MZM got hired to politicize the Robb-Silberman report on Iraqi intelligence. In any case, if you've got a special calendar item marked: "Subpoena Showdown over Turdblossom's and Harriet's testimony," you might want to include an item mentioning Condi as well, because this Administration is going to try its damndest to prevent us from proving how they lied us into war. 

And finally, note how the gwb43 inquiry jumped to the front of Waxman's oversight queue (the Ralston invite went out today, the request for information from Fielding went out yesterday)? What do you think–maybe Waxman agrees with us that this may be the closet where BushCo keeps all its smoking guns? I'm just dreaming of the day when we get a document dump of all the political dirty tricks Rove has overseen over the last six years. 

Related posts:

1. HJC Schedules “Get Democrats to Cave on PATRIOT” Hearing
2. Leon Panetta Begs and Threatens for Consensus Rather than Oversight
3. DPC to Continue Drive for Oversight, Accountability for Iraq and Afghanistan Contractors
4. Why Can’t CIA Handle the Same Level of Oversight the Military Gets?
5. Bill Black is Right: Federal Reserve = Oversight FAIL