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Sen. Stevens Hires Lawyers in Probe Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens Hires Lawyers in Corruption Probe The Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Veteran Sen. Ted Stevens has hired lawyers and been instructed by the FBI to preserve records relevant to a burgeoning federal investigation into corruption in Alaska, The Washington Post reported Thursday.

As part of a larger probe, federal agents are investigating the remodeling of Stevens’ Alaska home in 2000. The investigation is linked to the VECO Corp. bribery case that last month produced guilty pleas from two of the oil-field service company’s top executives, according to law enforcement officials.

“They put me on notice to preserve some records,” Stevens, 83, told the Post, declining to say what kinds of records are involved.

Stevens, the longest-serving Republican in Senate history and an iconic figure in Alaska, declined comment Thursday.

“Don’t waste your time. I’ve said what I said in an answer to a direct question, but I’m not commenting any further,” Stevens told The Associated Press.

Three contractors who worked on the remodeling project at Stevens’ home in Girdwood, a resort town about 40 miles south of Anchorage, have said the FBI asked them to turn over their records from the job. One, Anchorage contractor Augie Paone, has previously said VECO executives including former CEO Bill Allen helped oversee the home remodeling project.

Paone testified before a federal grand jury about the work in December and has said that he would send bills on the remodeling project to VECO, where someone would examine them for accuracy before forwarding them to Stevens. Paone has said as far as he knew, Stevens paid the bills.

Allen pleaded guilty May 7 to bribery and other charges and is cooperating with investigators in the probe, which has focused on last year’s negotiations for a new oil and gas tax in Alaska and a proposed natural gas pipeline that would have benefited VECO.

The investigation also has produced federal indictments against one current and two former Republican members of the Alaska House of Representatives on bribery and extortion charges.

WASHINGTON—Documents indicate eight congressional leaders were briefed about the Bush administration’s terrorist surveillance program on the eve of its expiration in 2004, contradicting sworn Senate testimony this week by Attorney General .

The documents underscore questions about Gonzales’ credibility as senators consider whether a perjury investigation should be opened into conflicting accounts about the program and a dramatic March 2004 confrontation leading up to its potentially illegal reauthorization.

A Gonzales spokesman maintained Wednesday that the attorney general stands by his testimony.

At a heated hearing Tuesday, Gonzales repeatedly testified that the issue at hand was not about the , which allowed the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on suspects in the United States without receiving court approval.

Instead, Gonzales said, the emergency meetings on March 10, 2004, focused on an intelligence program that he would not describe.

Gonzales, who was then serving as counsel to Bush, testified that the White House Situation Room briefing sought to inform congressional leaders about the pending expiration of the unidentified program and Justice Department objections to renew it. Those objections were led by then-Deputy Attorney General Jim Comey, who questioned the program’s legality.

“The dissent related to other intelligence activities,” Gonzales testified at Tuesday’s hearing. “The dissent was not about the terrorist surveillance program.”

“Not the TSP?” responded Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y. “Come on. If you say it’s about other, that implies not. Now say it or not.”

“It was not,” Gonzales answered. “It was about other intelligence activities.”

A four-page memo from the national intelligence director’s office says the White House briefing with the eight lawmakers on March 10, 2004, was about the terror surveillance program, or TSP.

The memo, dated May 17, 2006, and addressed to then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert, details “the classification of the dates, locations, and names of members of Congress who attended briefings on the Terrorist Surveillance Program,” wrote then-Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte.

It shows that the briefing in March 2004 was attended by the Republican and Democratic House and Senate leaders and leading members of both chambers’ intelligence committees, as Gonzales testified.

Schumer called the memo evidence that Gonzales was not truthful in his testimony.

“It seemed clear to just about everyone on the committee that the attorney general was deceiving us when he said the dissent was about other intelligence activities and this memo is even more evidence that helps confirm our suspicions,” Schumer said.

Bush acknowledged the existence of the classified surveillance program in December 2005 after it was revealed by The New York Times. In January, it was put under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for judicial review before any wiretaps were to be approved.

Asked for comment on the documents Wednesday evening, Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said Gonzales “stands by his testimony.”

“The disagreement referenced by Jim Comey in March 2004 was not about the particular intelligence activity that has been publicly described by the president,” Roehrkasse said. “It was about other highly classified intelligence activities that have been briefed to the intelligence committees.”

The disagreement over whether to renew the program led to a dramatic, and highly controversial, confrontation between Gonzales and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft on the night of March 10, 2004.

After briefing the congressional leaders, Gonzales testified that he and then-White House chief of staff Andy Card headed to a Washington hospital room, where a sedated Ashcroft was recovering from surgery. Ashcroft had already turned over his powers as attorney general to Comey.

Comey was in the hospital room as well, and recounted to senators in his own sworn testimony in May that he “thought I just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man, who did not have the powers of the attorney general because they had been transferred to me.”

Ultimately, Ashcroft sided with Comey, and Gonzales and Card left the hospital after a five- to six-minute conversation.

Gonzales denied that he and Card tried to pressure Ashcroft into approving the program over Comey’s objections.

“We never had any intent to ask anything of him if we did not feel that he was competent,” Gonzales told the Senate panel Tuesday. “At the end of his description of the legal issues, he said, ‘I’m not making this decision. The deputy attorney general is.’ And so Andy Card and I thanked him. We told him that we would continue working with the deputy attorney general and we left.”

Democrats and Republicans alike expressed disbelief at Gonzales’ version of events.

“There’s a discrepancy here in sworn testimony,” Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said after listening to Gonzales, raising the possibility of a perjury inquiry. “We’re going to have to ask who’s telling the truth, who’s not.”

Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, top Republican on the panel, also disregarded Gonzales’ description. “I do not find your testimony credible, candidly,” he told the attorney general.

House and Senate lawmakers who attended the Situation Room briefing are divided on the accuracy of Gonzales’ account of that meeting, which he said concluded by a “consensus in the room from the congressional leadership is that we should continue the activities, at least for now, despite the objections of Mr. Comey.”

Three Democrats Д House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller and former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle Д dispute Gonzales’ testimony. Rockefeller called it “untruthful,” and Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly said the speaker disagreed that it should be continued without Justice Department or FISA court oversight.

On the other hand, former GOP House Intelligence Chairman Porter Goss, “does not recall anyone saying the project must be ended,’ spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise Dyck said. And former Senate Republican leader Bill Frist stopped short of confirming or denying the meeting’s outcome.

“I recall being briefed with the others about the program and it was stated that Gonzales would visit with Ashcroft in the hospital and that our meeting was part of the administration’s responsibility to discuss with the leadership of Congress,’ Frist said in a statement.

BLAINE, Wash. — were thinking landscaping, not politics, when they built an 85-foot-long concrete wall in their backyard.

But their yard happens to run along the U.S.-Canadian border Д a situation that has put the Leus in the middle of a property rights battle, led the Bush administration to fire its own hand-picked border caretaker, and given rise to a legal dispute over the extent of presidential authority.

The Leus, who moved about two years ago from Hawaii to this town in the state’s northwestern corner, had just finished building the 4-foot-high wall when they were visited earlier this year by the , a joint U.S.-Canadian agency maintains the countries’ long, often-unguarded border.

American commissioner Dennis Schornack, a Republican appointed by President Bush, told the Leus their retaining wall stuck about three feet into a 10-foot border buffer zone that had to remain free of obstruction. He said if the Leus didn’t tear their wall down, the commission would do it for them Д and send them the bill.

The Leus were outraged. They said they had done all their homework before putting in the wall, and none of the local officials who issued building permits ever mentioned such a problem.

So the Leus sued, with help from the , a conservative law firm that takes up property rights cases against government regulators and “environmental extremists.” The foundation, which also opposes the and affirmative action policies, has an annual budget of about $9 million, versus less than $1.5 million for the Boundary Commission.

Schornack began preparing a defense, and resisted when the Justice Department appeared ready to settle with the Leus. If this little wall is allowed to go forward, Schornack argued, what’s to stop any other property owner from building an even bigger wall near the border?

Soon enough, Schornack got a one-page fax from the White House: You’re fired.

“All he does is try to do his job, and he gets told, `You’re fired Д because you’re trying to do your job,”‘ said , Schornack’s lawyer.

Now Schornack, a lifelong Republican and longtime aide to former GOP Michigan Gov. , has taken his own battle with the Bush administration to federal court.

He argues that he is trying to uphold the treaty he was sworn to protect, while the administration is seeking to remove him for disloyalty Д simply because he didn’t go along with Justice Department in the Leus’ case.

Not only that, but Schornack claims the president cannot fire him, because he works for a binational agency governed by international treaty, not U.S. law. He says the only way to get rid of him is to wait for him to resign, die or become incapacitated.

The U.S. attorney’s office in Seattle, which is representing the government in its dispute with Schornack, recently called his claims “breathtaking.”

“Mr. Schornack’s strained interpretation of the treaty would lead to the absurd result that a commissioner … receives lifetime tenure and cannot be removed even for malfeasance,” government attorneys said in court papers.

The Bush administration has appointed a replacement for Schornack, both on the Boundary Commission and for his second job on the International Joint Commission, which handles boundary waters issues. Schornack was paid about $135,000 a year.

In Blaine, the Leus Д he is a 69-year-old retired electrician, while his 72-year-old wife raises Pomeranian showdogs Д say all the high-level political controversy seems a little bewildering.

The Leus, who live across from rural British Columbia, say they built the wall to keep their sloping backyard from washing away into the shallow ditch that marks the 49th Parallel, the border with Canada.

Their only motivation, he said, was a nice lawn and a neat patio, with a relaxing view of the neighboring Canadian farm fields and distant, snowy mountains.

Herbert Leu would not discuss his political affiliations.

For now, the wall stands. But while the case winds its way through the courts, the yard remains an unfinished mess of piled dirt, scattered weeds and stacks of lumber because the Leus are waiting to see what happens before they finish landscaping the yard.

“It doesn’t make sense Д moving a wall just three feet in and it’s OK,” Leu said. “The whole thing is, we’re not putting a wall on the government’s property. We’re putting it on our property.”

Queensland Opposition Leader Jeff Seeney is expected to use his Budget reply speech to outline concerns about what he has called the Government’s dangerous debt level.

Mr Seeney says Queensland should be enjoying increased revenue from Australia’s economic prosperity and the mining boom.

But he says the money has been spent on the Government’s mistakes.

“Fixing up the health crisis, fixing up the water crisis, and the power crisis and the child protection crisis,” he said.

Mr Seeney will deliver his Budget reply speech in State Parliament today.

He says Treasurer Anna Bligh’s announcement that $8 billion will need to be borrowed to fund a capital works program is his major area of concern.

“Never before in Queensland’s history has any government borrowed to this level,” he said.

In Parliament last night, the Government rushed through legislation which will allow some of the Budget’s big spending items to proceed.

WASHINGTON (AP) Two Senate office buildings were evacuated Wednesday because of the smell of smoke.

Fire officials had been called to the Dirksen and Hart buildings, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Capitol officials were investigating whether the smoke was coming from the roof of the Dirksen building, the official said.