It marked an embarrassing first defeat for Pelosi, a California liberal who had endorsed Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, a key player in the anti-war effort that helped Democrats sweep to power in the House of Representatives and the Senate.

The secret vote behind closed doors was 149-86.

Democrats embraced Hoyer, a Maryland moderate who has been Pelosi's deputy while she served the past three years as minority leader. The two have had a somewhat strained relationship.

Pelosi, as expected, was officially nominated to be the first woman speaker of the House. A vote by the full House will be held when the 110th Congress convenes in January.

Shortly before the election several Democrats said Murtha had denounced a package of lobby and ethics reforms designed to clean up how the scandal-rocked Congress does business, another key issue in the 2006 elections. He said he was not referring to the Pelosi-backed package.

Pelosi endorsed Murtha on Sunday, ending her neutrality in the contest and getting behind the man who managed her successful 2001 campaign for House minority whip. She defeated Hoyer.

Rep. Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat, predicted there would no lasting fallout from the leadership battle.

"A lot of people wished this hadn't happened," Frank said. "There's a sense that we had a little stumble ... (but) I think it will disappear."

Rep. Albert Wynn, a Maryland Democrat, said the battle will fade away and "people will focus" on the party's agenda, which includes pushing for a phased withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq, raising the federal minimum wage for the first time in a decade, expanding health care and upgrading education.

Pelosi and one of her closest advisers, veteran California liberal Rep. George Miller, twisted arms and threatened committee chairs with the loss of their posts and perks if they didn't support Pelosi's candidate for Majority Leader, Pennsylvani'a Rep. John Murtha, whom Pelosi surprised everyone by endorsing. But the caucus bitch-slapped Pelosi with a lopsided vote today that wasn't even close -- 149 for Hoyer to 86 for Murtha. As one veteran Congressional insider told me on the phone today, "the caucus simply wasn't going to vote for an old sleaze-bag like Murtha" -- who, just the day before the vote on Majority Leader, in speaking to the conservative Blue Dog Democrats, called the Democratic ethics package "total crap."

Notorious as a water-carrier for the military-industrial complex and a battler for obsolete or badly-performing weapons system the arms-and-aviation lobbyists love (especially those made by firms represented by his brother, a hired-gun lobbyist), Murtha was also caught up in Abscam, the famous FBI sting operation that targeted corrupt congressmen 26 years ago.

Indeed, Murtha was caught on videotape back then telling the FBI agents posing as Arab sheikhs that two other congressman "expect to be taken care of." Here's what Murtha said next, in a summary by Washington Post editorial page staffer Ruth Marcus in her syndicated column proclaiming that Murth'a Abscam conduct "disqualified" him from being considered for the Majority Leader's post:

"' I'm not interested - at this point,' he [Murtha] says of the dangled bribe. 'You know, we do business for a while, maybe I'll be interested, maybe I won't, you know.' Indeed, he acknowledges, even though he needs to be careful - "I expect to be in the (expletive) leadership of the House,' he notes - the money's awfully tempting. 'It's hard for me to say, just the hell with it.'"

"This," Marcus wrote, "is John Murtha, incoming House speaker Nancy Pelosi's choice to be her majority leader, snared but not charged in the Abscam probe in 1980. "The Democrats intend to lead the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history," Pelosi pledged on election night. Five days later, she wrote Murtha a letter endorsing his bid to become her No. 2.post."

Not that Steny Hoyer is any prize, mind you -- he's a not very talented hack, and a died-in-the-wool DLCer to boot. But how could Pelosi fool herself into thinking she could put over Murtha? How could she so badly misread the mood of the Democratic caucus she's supposed to be leading? This wasn't the first time Pelosi misread her own caucus -- she did the same thing back at the time of the House vote approving George Bush's invasion of Iraq, when -- as then minority leader of the Democrats -- she dragged her feet and only finally came out firmly against the invasion after it became clear that a significant majority of the Democratic caucus would vote against it.

Just who is Nancy Pelosi, the lawmaker from San Francisco with an exagerrated reputation for liberalism? She's an opportunist and a trimmer, who -- just two days after the Democrats re-took both houses of Congress and her Speakership was assured -- proclaimed, "We must govern from the center." When she was first elected to lead the House Democrats six years ago, I investigated Pelosi's background for the L.A. WEEKLY. And one of the things I found out in my digging was that she just ain't all that smart.

In view of today's debacle for Pelosi, I thought those who don't know where she came from and what she's really all about might profit from a reading of my L.A. Weekly report on Pelosi, so I'm reprinting it here -- this background helps explain why we shouldn't expect very much from the first woman Speaker:

Pelosi's Problems

The San Francisco Democrat carries baggage of money and special interests

By Doug Ireland
L.A.Weekly, Wednesday, November 13, 2002

IS NANCY PELOSI THE ANSWER TO THE Democrats' problems? Forgive me for having a few doubts.

Certainly, it's long past the time when one of the two major parties should have placed a woman in a position of real political power - and by choosing Pelosi as their new leader, House Democrats have punched a hole in the glass ceiling which many other democracies around the world have already punctured. But is that enough?

There's precious little room left for legislative maneuvering by the minority party, especially under the more draconian rules in the House, where Tom DeLay enforces an iron control over what is permitted to come to the floor for a vote. This means - after a midterm congressional campaign in which the Democrats lost by serving up a themeless porridge of accommodationist me-tooisms - that what the party needs more than anything else is a "great communicator" in its House leader (as The New York Times editorialized the other day). And, of course, one with a solid alternative message to communicate.

Pelosi, however, has long been plagued by reservations about her intellectual capacities. She's a dogged inside player whose canny climb up the pole of politics has been greased by money - but she's never been known as a policy innovator and has only a slim record of legislative accomplishment. Moreover, despite an effective White House campaign to portray her as a "left-wing San Francisco Democrat," Pelosi's progressivism often seems more rooted in circumstance than in deep conviction.

Unlike Paul Wellstone, who had an organic connection to the issue-oriented citizen activism whence he came, Pelosi's career is a classic example of checkbook politics. She married money - her husband, Paul, is a former banker who became a wealthy real estate developer - and the Pelosi fortune makes her the richest member of California's House delegation. Her political largesse and fund-raising skills brought her to the attention of the late Congressman Phil Burton, a powerhouse of a man who took her under his wing and guided her ascendance to chair the California Democratic Party. She lost a campaign for Democratic national chairman, but - after serving as fund-raising chair for the Democrats' 1986 U.S. Senate campaign - Pelosi was tapped by Phil Burton's brother John to take over the family House seat which Phil's widow, Sala, had occupied after her husband's death. Her opponent was San Francisco Supervisor Harry Britt, who'd been picked by the gay community as successor to the assassinated Harvey Milk. Pelosi buried Britt in money, and ran a nasty campaign that portrayed him as a "gay socialist." (Years later, her money-raising practices sometimes get her in trouble. Last month, she was forced to shut down one of ä her two political-action committees, which had been operating illegally as a double-dipping laundry, and candidates were asked to return its contributions.)

Before winning the House seat, her only real hands-on electoral experience had been helping Jerry Brown win the 1976 presidential primary in Maryland, where her father had been a congressman and mayor of Baltimore. But in 1992, as chair of the Democratic National Convention's platform committee, she slavishly toed the Clinton/New Democrat line and prevented the dissident Brown - who'd again won several primaries - from speaking to the committee.

Most profiles of Pelosi note her advocacy of AIDS issues and gay civil rights, and her bucking the Clinton administration by opposing most-favored-nation trade status for China on human-rights grounds. But given the huge Chinese-American and gay populations in her district (and lingering resentment in the latter over her defeat of Britt), these positions were a nearly obligatory reflection of local politics.

Aside from those two issues, Pelosi's most notable accomplishment was to spearhead the first privatization of a national park. Under legislation passed by her mentor Phil Burton as part of his legacy to San Francisco, the militarily useless Army base at the Presidio was turned into a national park when it closed. But Pelosi expended her political capital while pushing through a bill that turned the Presidio - 1,500 acres of the most valuable real estate in the world - over to an unelected private trust dominated by her corporate and real estate cronies in the business of raising campaign cash; and the Presidio, with Pelosi's blessing, is now being developed by producer/director George Lucas as headquarters for his film company (with $60 million in tax breaks to finance it). Pelosi even used her clout with Clinton to smother Mayor Willie Brown's plan to convert the former base's 466-unit Wherry Houses into homes for low-income and homeless families, victims of San Francisco's acute housing shortage. That's why, ever since, The Bay Guardian - San Francisco's progressive alternative weekly - symbolically has always refused to endorse Pelosi for re-election to her supersafe seat.

As assistant minority leader and a member of the House's Human Rights Caucus, at the height of Ariel Sharon's bloody offensive in the West Bank this spring - denounced by Amnesty International for criminal violations of human rights - Pelosi chose to ignore the Nobel Prize winning organization and instead supported a hard-line DeLay-sponsored GOP resolution endorsing Sharon's blind use of military force, backing a resolution praising George Bush's "leadership" in tilting toward Sharon, and voting for a GOP initiative to increase military aid to Israel (at a time when the Gallup Poll showed 60 percent of Americans favored suspension of that aid). There are, quite coincidentally, of course, many pro-Israeli fat cats in Pelosi's Rolodex of contributers.

Pelosi is capable of convenient political pirouettes. Right after Dick Gephardt's Rose Garden sellout to Bush on Iraq, Roll Call reported that Pelosi was considering sponsoring an alternative to the Gephardt blank-check resolution giving Bush sole authority to decide on war. That would have shown some real leadership. But Pelosi dropped the plan, apparently because she thought it would hurt her in the inevitable contest to succeed Gephardt. Two weeks later, after it was clear a majority of the Democratic caucus would vote against war, Pelosi joined them - but, of course, her district is overwhelmingly anti-war. Then there was Pelosi's surprising endorsement of scandal-plagued Representative Gary Condit for re-election - an endorsement she was forced to withdraw after a firestorm of protest from women's groups.

Pelosi went ballistic a few years ago when the head of the AFL-CIO's Committee on Political Education (COPE), in opposing her bid to chair the national Democrats, referred to her as an "airhead." But, says a senior liberal Democratic strategist today, "Pelosi is simply not very articulate. She tends to talk too much - like many people who have limited confidence in their intelligence and tend to make up in verbosity what they lack in veracity." That's why the San Francisco Chronicle recently commented tactfully that in her noteless speeches Pelosi "tends to get sidetracked," that she has a reputation for avoiding the press, and in her infrequent TV appearances she lacks the spontaneous authenticity of, say, Barney Frank or John McCain.

In Bay Area politics, Pelosi is considered an establishment figure. Says S.F. Supervisor Tom Ammiano, the once and future mayoral candidate who's built a successful progressive coalition against the Willie Brown pro-business machine, "I've rarely ever had her support," adding, "We could do worse than Pelosi - but we could also do better." And her close ally Representative Anna Eshoo accurately describes her pal as "first and foremost pragmatic."

Pelosi got her new job as minority leader the old-fashioned way - she bought it, raising some $8 million for House Democrats in the last election cycle and criss-crossing the country handing out the checks. Now, the top staffers who ran the leader's office for both Tom Foley and Gephardt have been asked to stay on by Pelosi. That's more of a signal of continuity than of the sharp break with its past lethargy the Democrats need to win.

"It was all very warm, lots of hugs, high-fives, that kind of stuff," said Senator Ken Salazar of Colorado.

Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon marveled, "One senator after another kept coming up and shaking his hand."

And Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas noted, "I gave him a hug and a kiss."

Mr. Lieberman received a standing ovation at a caucus luncheon after Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, who is poised to become the majority leader, declared, "We're all family."

All of which is particularly touching in light of recent history. It was, after all, just three months ago that Mr. Lieberman became something of a party pariah after losing the Democratic primary in Connecticut but continuing his re-election bid as an independent.

Mr. Lieberman won re-election last week without help from most of his Democratic Senate colleagues, who backed Ned Lamont, his Democratic rival, over their "good friend Joe Lieberman."

These would be many of the same good friends "who were happy to leave my dad by the side of the road," as Mr. Lieberman's son, Matthew, put it in an election night speech. These, presumably, would include "friends" like Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, John Kerry of Massachusetts and Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut, all Lamont supporters.

"It's clear that the Democrats need him at this point more than he needs them," said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, whom Mr. Lieberman genuinely does consider a close friend. "How sweet is this?"

Indeed, it is hard to imagine how Mr. Lieberman could have emerged better from last week's election. He was re-elected comfortably, and the Democratic Party he still belongs to is now in the majority, assuring him the chairmanship of the powerful Homeland Security Committee.

Yet that majority is slim enough, 51 to 49, to turn Mr. Lieberman into arguably the Senate's most influential member. If he defects, the Senate would effectively be under Republican control because Vice President Dick Cheney would cast tie-breaking votes.

"It was very painful to him to have all these people he thought were his friends embrace his opponent," Ms. Collins said. "They just threw him overboard. But now, not only is he re-elected resoundingly, but he is also the key to which party controls the Senate."

Mr. Lieberman's situation underscores the precarious calculus of political friendships. People close to him say he remains miffed, if not bitter, about what he considers the betrayal of allies who supported an unknown, untested and unfamiliar candidate.

In recent months, Mr. Lieberman has frequently invoked the Harry Truman maxim that if you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.

Mr. Lieberman has suggested he has felt especially wounded by Mr. Dodd, Connecticut's senior senator, with whom he had shared a close bond since arriving in the Senate in 1989. Mr. Dodd had supported Mr. Lieberman in the primary, but endorsed Mr. Lamont after he won. Mr. Dodd's appearance with Mr. Lamont at a Democratic "unity" rally and in a campaign commercial infuriated Mr. Lieberman, friends said.

Mr. Dodd said in a brief interview Tuesday, "We all make decisions, and those decisions have consequences."

Earlier in the day, he attended a Capitol Hill news conference that drew every Democrat in Connecticut's Congressional delegation except Mr. Lieberman.

Friends said the strains between Mr. Lieberman and his Democratic colleagues show.

"It will take a little time for the room to really warm up from both ends," said Senator Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana, one of the few Senate Democrats who supported Mr. Lieberman in his general election campaign. "I would not be forthright if I didn't say there was some healing and work that has to be done."

During the campaign, Mr. Lieberman said repeatedly that he would continue to vote with the Democratic caucus, but there were calls from the left for the Democratic leadership to strip him of his seniority and committee assignments if he won.

But as Mr. Lieberman claimed a healthy lead in polls, Mr. Reid reached out to him. Over time, Mr. Reid's and other Democratic leaders' support for Mr. Lamont became half-hearted, or nonexistent, according to Mr. Lamont's campaign.

Mr. Lieberman classifies himself as an "independent Democrat" and has said that recent events left him feeling "liberated" and "unshackled," not exactly reassuring words to Democrats.

He stirred more anxiety Sunday, when in an interview on NBC's "Meet the Press," he refused to rule out becoming a Republican (while adding, "I hope I don't get to that point").

In brief remarks to reporters Tuesday, Mr. Lieberman said he had refused to rule out switching parties largely because Tim Russert, the show's host, "kept pressing me on it."

But Mr. Lieberman also said that while "most of my vote clearly came from independents and Republicans" in Connecticut, "it's fair to say that I couldn't have won without Democratic support."

Mr. Lieberman restated that it was possible he could join Senate Republicans, but he added, "I'm not going to threaten on every issue to leave the caucus."

Clearly, friends say, he is relishing his sudden ascent from Democratic reject in Connecticut to Senate kingmaker in Washington. "He is just sitting there in the catbird seat, and it must be delicious for him," Ms. Collins said.

Mr. Lieberman was asked Tuesday if he viewed his position as similar to a swing vote on the Supreme Court, a role often played by former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor or Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. The parallel had not occurred to him, Mr. Lieberman replied, but he considered it "a complimentary analogy."

He beamed as he said this, as he did for much of the day.

But it was on the issue of Iraq that he was most passionate. Voter anger over the war swept his party to power with the unlikely defeat of six Republican senators, he said. Democrats must respond to that anger, he added, with hearings to keep the heat on the Bush administration, and with calls for a regional Middle Eastern conference and a revitalized Iraqi reconstruction effort.

To that end, he said, one of the first acts of the new Democratic Congress will be a $75 billion boost to the military budget to try to get the Army's diminished units back into combat shape.

Democrats will not try, Reid pledged, to play the strongest hand they have -- using Congress's power of the purse to starve the war effort of money and force the president to move. Such an effort would only elicit a veto from Bush. But he said Democrats will marshal their newly acquired power -- in hearing rooms and on the Senate floor -- to stoke public opinion and drive the debate.

"Three Americans killed yesterday, four British; 150 Iraqis taken out of that building and kidnapped; 1,800-plus went through that one Baghdad morgue but that doesn't count all the dead," Reid recounted. "My displeasure with the president, he doesn't understand the urgency of this. It's all victory for him, but I don't know what that means anymore in Iraq. I do know what we are doing now doesn't work."

Reid said he will be able to work well with Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the incoming House speaker, whom he described as resilient and "a very astute politician." But he said the Senate will work differently from the House, given the Senate Democrats' very narrow 51 to 49 majority, which will necessitate close cooperation with Republicans.

"The speaker of the House has to be aggressive," Reid said. "It's like the British Parliament. If you've got the votes, you ram it through. But the Senate works differently."

Democrats also elected Sen. Richard J. Durbin (Ill.) yesterday as assistant Senate majority leader. Durbin has been assistant minority leader since January 2005. Senate Republicans will elect their leaders for the 110th Congress today.

In January, after two years as a Senate minority leader who bedeviled the Republican legislative agenda and sharply criticized Bush, Reid will take the helm of a body that has been notoriously difficult to control.

To the casual observer, Reid comes across as a reserved, soft-spoken, deferential politician who appears more comfortable in the backrooms of the Capitol than in the spotlight. But to those who have watched him close up, Reid's reputation is quite different -- that of a brawler who moves with the alacrity he acquired in his days as an amateur boxer.

The consummate pessimist in a political world full of sunny optimism, Reid is fond of saying that he would rather expect the worst and accept the occasional pleasant surprise than forever live with disappointment.

Reid, 66, came by his dour outlook honestly. He grew up in a tin-roofed shack in the gold-mining hamlet of Searchlight, Nev. His father was a hard-rock miner and a hard drinker whose battles with alcoholism and depression ended in suicide at age 58. His mother was a laundrywoman. Reid hitchhiked to high school 40 miles from home.

Upon graduation, local merchants raised money for his college tuition. He helped put himself through George Washington University Law School, working nights as a U.S. Capitol police officer.

But most of Reid's adult life has been in politics, becoming city attorney in Henderson, Nev., in 1964; a member of the Nevada State Assembly in 1968; and lieutenant governor in 1970. He clashed with the mob as head of the state's Gaming Commission, then went to the House in 1982. He reached the Senate in 1986.

In that time, he has been beset by controversies that continue to pose political problems for him. A $400,000 land purchase in Clark County, Nev., that Reid made in 1998 with a friend and business partner grabbed headlines in October when the senator had to amend four years of ethics reports to Congress to more fully explain the transaction. The sale brought in $1.1 million, netting a $700,000 profit in six years.

"Windfall?" he bristled yesterday. "I shouldn't have sold it. That was my big mistake. You know what that property is worth now? Thirteen million dollars."

This week, the Los Angeles Times published a report suggesting that the $18 million that Reid secured for a bridge connecting Laughlin, Nev., to Bullhead City, Ariz., may have boosted the value of land Reid owns nearby. Again, Reid scoffed at any hint of wrongdoing. The bridge, he said, is needed because heavy truck traffic has been limited on the Hoover Dam since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The land in Arizona has been in his family since the 1960s, he added, noting that he has never seen it, much less thought of boosting its value. He said that it could take until 2013 to build that bridge.

Last month, the National Republican Senatorial Committee cited the controversies around Reid as it goaded Democratic candidates to return the party leader's campaign donations.

Reid's loyalty to the mining industry, which plays an important role in his state's economy, has created run-ins with fellow Democrats who seek to raise royalty fees on federal land and impose stronger environmental standards. He also opposes abortion rights, a position derived from his Mormon religion, which has put him at odds with many other Democrats.

Yet, Senate Democrats have strong faith in their leader.

"We went through combat together; and when you go through combat together, you learn everything," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), who heads the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which helped Democrats take control of the Senate.

In the run-up to the Nov. 7 midterm elections, Democrats kept their legislative agenda carefully circumscribed to a set of initiatives that conservatives, moderates and liberals could all agree on. But in yesterday's interview, Reid hinted that Democrats will have to go further to address what he sees as the widening gap between rich and poor, and a middle class squeezed by health care costs and rising tuition.

Budget rules will be passed to require that any new spending or tax cuts will have to be offset by equal spending cuts or tax increases, he said.

"We can do this," he added. "People might not like what we do," but Democrats will stick to the rules.

He pledged an "unalterable commitment" not to touch the middle-class tax cuts Bush secured in his first term. But he said Democrats "would be crazy" to rule out rolling back tax breaks that benefited the top 1 percent of earners. He also spoke volubly about federal health-care programs for the elderly and for veterans that he said should be a model as Congress looks to address the growing problem of the uninsured.

"We have to look at the uninsured because it's bankrupting our country," he said.

Asked about a proposal floated by former president Bill Clinton to expand Medicare for those who could buy into it, Reid said, "we're not there yet," but he added that it should be studied.

"Someday, someday," he said, "what we have to do is cinch up our belts and take on the insurance industry."

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was personally involved in the late 2002 interrogation of a high-value al-Qaida detainee known in intelligence circles as "the 20th hijacker." He also communicated weekly with the man in charge of the interrogation, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the controversial commander of the Guantánamo Bay detention center.

During the same period, detainee Mohammed al-Kahtani suffered from what Army investigators have called "degrading and abusive" treatment by soldiers who were following the interrogation plan Rumsfeld had approved. Kahtani was forced to stand naked in front of a female interrogator, was accused of being a homosexual, and was forced to wear women's underwear and to perform "dog tricks" on a leash. He received 18-to-20-hour interrogations during 48 of 54 days.

Little more than two years later, during an investigation into the mistreatment of prisoners at Guantánamo, Rumsfeld expressed puzzlement at the notion that his policies had caused the abuse. "He was going, 'My God, you know, did I authorize putting a bra and underwear on this guy's head?'" recalled Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt, an investigator who interviewed Rumsfeld twice in early 2005.

These disclosures are contained in a Dec. 20, 2005, Army inspector general's report on Miller's conduct, which was obtained this week by Salon through the Freedom of Information Act. The 391-page document -- which has long passages blacked out by the government -- concludes that Miller should not be punished for his oversight role in detainee operations, a fact that was reported last month by Time magazine. But the never-before-released full report also includes the transcripts of interviews with high-ranking military officials that shed new light on the role that Rumsfeld and Miller played in the harsh treatment of Kahtani, who had met with Osama bin Laden on several occasions and received terrorist training in al-Qaida camps.

In a sworn statement to the inspector general, Schmidt described Rumsfeld as "personally involved" in the interrogation and said that the defense secretary was "talking weekly" with Miller. Schmidt said he concluded that Rumsfeld did not specifically prescribe the more "creative" interrogation methods used on Kahtani. But he added that the open-ended policies Rumsfeld approved, and that the apparent lack of supervision of day-to-day interrogations permitted the abusive conduct to take place. "Where is the throttle on this stuff?" asked Schmidt, an Air Force fighter pilot, who said in his interview under oath with the inspector general that he had concerns about the length and repetition of the harsh interrogation methods. "There were no limits."

Schmidt also saw close parallels between the interrogations at Guantánamo, and the photographic evidence of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. "Just for the lack of a camera, it would sure look like Abu Ghraib," Schmidt told the inspector general, in the interview that was conducted in August 2005. At the direction of Pentagon officials, Miller led a mission to Iraq in August 2003 to review detainee operations at Abu Ghraib -- a visit that critics say precipitated the abuse of prisoners there.

In April 2005, Schmidt completed his report on detainee abuse at Guantánamo, which he co-authored with Brig. Gen. John T. Furlow. They recommended that Miller be "admonished" and "held accountable" for the alleged abuse of Kahtani. But that recommendation was rejected by Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, the current head of the Southern Command, who said Miller had not violated any law or policy.

On Dec. 2, 2002, Rumsfeld approved 16 harsher interrogation strategies for use against Kahtani, including the use of forced nudity, stress positions and the removal of religious items. In public statements, however, Rumsfeld has maintained that none of the policies at Guantánamo led to "inhumane" treatment of detainees. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, told Salon Thursday that Kahtani was an al-Qaida terrorist who provided a "treasure trove" of still-classified information during his interrogation. "Al-Kahtani's interrogation was guided by a very detailed plan, conducted by trained professionals in a controlled environment, and with active supervision and oversight," Gordon said in an e-mail statement. "Nothing was done randomly."

Miller -- who has invoked his right against self-incrimination in courts-martial of Abu Ghraib soldiers -- said that he did not know all the details of Kahtani's interrogation. But Schmidt told the inspector general that he found that claim "hard to believe" in light of Miller's knowledge of Rumsfeld's continuing interest in Kahtani. "The secretary of defense is personally involved in the interrogation of one person, and the entire General Counsel system of all the departments of the military," Schmidt said. "There is just not a too-busy alibi there for that."

The harsh interrogation of Kahtani came to an abrupt end in mid-January 2003. Gen. James T. Hill, Craddock's predecessor as the head of Southern Command, recalled in his interview with the inspector general that he received a call from Rumsfeld on a January weekend asking about the progress of Kahtani's interrogation. "Someone had come to him and suggested that it needed to be looked at," Hill said of Rumsfeld. "He said, 'What do you think?' And I said, 'Why don't [you] let me call General Miller.'"

According to Hill's account of that call, Miller advised that the harsh interrogation of Kahtani should continue, using the techniques Rumsfeld had previously approved. "We think we're right on the verge of making a breakthrough," Hill remembered Miller saying. Hill said he called Rumsfeld back with the news. "The secretary said, 'Fine,'" Hill remembered.

Nonetheless, several days later Rumsfeld revoked the harsher interrogation methods, apparently responding to military lawyers who had raised concerns that they may constitute cruel and unusual punishment or torture.

"My attitude on that was, 'Great!'" said Hill. The general recalled thinking about Rumsfeld and the decision to halt the harsh interrogation, "All I'm trying to do is what you want us to do in the first place and doing it the right way."

The harsher methods were not approved again.

Sana'a, Yemen. By the gates of the Old City, Muhammad Bashmilah was walking, talking, and laughing in the crowd - behaving like a man without a care in the world. Bargaining with the spice traders and joking with passers-by; at last he was free.

A 33-year-old businessman, Bashmilah has an impish sense of humour; his eyes sparkled as he chatted about his country and the khat leaves that all the young men were chewing. But when I began my interview by asking for the story of his past three years, his mood shifted. His face narrowed, his eyes calmed, and he stared beyond me - as if looking directly into the nether world from which he had so recently emerged.

For 11 months, Bashmilah was held in one of the CIA's most secret prisons - its so-called "black sites" - so secret that he had no idea in which country, or even on which continent, he was being held. He was flown there, in chains and wearing a blindfold, from another jail in Afghanistan; his guards wore masks; and he was held in a 10ft by 13ft cell with two video cameras that watched his every move. He was shackled to the floor with a chain of 110 links.

From the times of evening prayer given to him by the guards, the cold winter temperatures, and the number of hours spent flying to this secret jail, he suspected that he was held somewhere in eastern Europe - but he could not be sure.

When he arrived at the prison, said Bashmilah, he was greeted by an interrogator with the words: "Welcome to your new home." He implied that Bashmilah would never be released. "I had gone there without any reason, without any proof, without any accusation," he said. His mental state collapsed and he went on hunger strike for ten days - until he was force-fed food through his nostrils. Finally released after months in detention without being charged with any crime, Bashmilah was one of the first prisoners to provide an inside account of the most secret part of the CIA's detention system.

On 6 September, President George W Bush finally confirmed the existence of secret CIA jails such as the one that held Bashmilah. He added something chilling - a declaration that there were now "no terrorists in the CIA programme", that the many prisoners held with Bashmilah were all gone. It was a statement that hinted at something very dark - that the United States has "disappeared" hundreds of prisoners to an uncertain fate.

Let's examine the arithmetic of this systematic disappearance. In the first years after the attacks of 11 September, thousands of Taliban or suspected terrorist suspects were captured. Just in Afghanistan, the US admitted processing more than 6,000 prisoners. Pakistan has said it handed over around 500 captives to the US; Iran said it sent 1,000 across the border to Afghanistan. Of all these, some were released and just over 700 ended up in Guantanamo, Cuba. But the simple act of subtraction shows that thousands are missing. More than five years after 9/11, where are they all? We know that many were rendered to foreign jails, both by the CIA and directly by the US military. But how many precisely? The answer is still classified. No audit of the fate of all these souls has ever been published.

Bush's next big scandal.

Since the publications of photographs from Abu Ghraib, the Bush administration has faced a string of scandals concerning its conduct of the war on terror: from abuses of prisoners by the US military, to the rendition of terrorist suspects to jails in places such as Egypt and Syria, where torture is routine, a process first described in the New Statesman in May 2004. International outrage, inquiries launched against CIA activities by prosecutors in Europe, as well as clear instructions from the US Supreme Court that, in its reaction to 9/11, Congress had not issued the president with a "blank cheque", have all challenged the administration's venture into what vice-president Dick Cheney called "the dark side" of warfare.

But if Bush hoped to appease his critics with his public acknowledgement of the CIA's secret programmes, and his promise to bring some of America's most important captives to an open military trial at Guantanamo, then he will be disappointed. After last week's midterm elections, the administration will face legislators more emboldened to probe its conduct. And the issue of disappearances - of the fate of the missing prisoners held by the CIA and the Pentagon - threatens to become the next big scandal.

It was in early 2002, when the camp at Guantanamo Bay was opening up, that I heard from a source close to the CIA that most of the media were missing the point. As cameras showed images of chained prisoners being wheeled across the base on trolleys, there was predictable outrage. But the source described these images as "the press release".


This was what Washington wanted the world to see. Beyond Cuba was a concealed network of prisons around the globe that were becoming home to thousands more prisoners. The CIA had its own secret facilities, but many more were held in jails run by foreign allies. There are some good operational reasons for keeping the arrest of suspected terrorists secret. Sometimes, in the short term, deception makes good tactical sense; staying quiet about an arrest may keep the enemy guessing. Sometimes it can be for diplomatic reasons: secrecy may help to persuade countries such as Egypt to accept a prisoner.

But why is it so sensitive to confirm what happened to these prisoners, to detail how many were transferred where and when? Why should a country receiving prisoners be so embarrassed? And why - when countries such as Egypt have come clean and said "yes, we received 70 to 80 prisoners rendered by the United States" - will the United States itself not confirm what it did? Despite admitting, in general, that the CIA carries out renditions, the US has yet to own up to a single specific case of transferring a prisoner to foreign custody.

The explanation for the secrecy is one that most of the CIA officers involved in rendition will quite freely admit - a transfer to places such as Egypt or Uzbekistan (a country known for boiling prisoners alive) will inevitably involve torture. And knowingly sending a prisoner to face torture is, under both US and international law, an illegal act. Revealing the fate of the missing prisoners may be just too politically embarrassing.

Justifying war with torture

One of those "disappeared", for example, is the former al- Qaeda camp commander Ibn-al Shaykh al-Libi, who was captured in late 2001. Al-Libi was first interrogated by the FBI but, according to those involved, he was then snatched by the CIA and rendered to Cairo. It was while he was under Egyptian interrogation that al-Libi provided an important piece of "testimony": that Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship with al-Qaeda. It was an erroneous claim, since formally withdrawn by the CIA, but was used as part of the justification for the war in Iraq. Al-Libi's anonymous testimony was cited by Colin Powell before the United Nations. But no one mentioned where the intelligence came from.

After his interrogation in Egypt, al-Libi was sent back to US custody in Afghanistan. But now he has disappeared. Perhaps he has been sent to Libya? He is certainly a more important prisoner than the vast majority at Guantanamo. Yet sending al-Libi to the Cuban camp, put ting him on public trial and allowing him to tell his story would be a political disaster. So he remains hidden.

Other key prisoners are missing too - others whose stories would shock the public conscience. The US, for example, has never acknowledged what it did with German citizen Mohammed Haydar Zammar. He was captured in December 2001, one of the first in custody who was connected to the Hamburg cell that carried out the 9/11 attacks. And, again, instead of being held in US hands, he was rendered in secret to Damascus. He has never been brought to a public trial or had any chance to reveal how he was treated.

The cases of al-Libi and Zammar, who according to fellow prisoners in Syria was brutally tortured, illustrate the corrosive effect of the policy of disappearance. While the secrecy may protect the US from legal jeopardy and from political embarrassment, it also makes the threat of torture self-fulfilling. If you send a prisoner to Damascus, Tripoli or Tashkent, how can you hope to protect that prisoner - to ensure a fair trial or see that he stays alive - if you keep that rendition quiet? Secrecy protects the torturer; and it denies those innocent, those wrongly accused of crimes of terrorism and caught up in these renditions, any chance of justice.

Last month, Bush signed into law his new Military Commissions Act, which provides for the trial at Guantanamo of top al-Qaeda leaders. The act grants fewer rights to defendants than the Nazis got at Nuremberg. And yet, in this strange world, the rights now granted to men such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man who devised the 9/11 attack and who will now be brought to trial, still rank far higher than the rights of the small fry, those much less significant players behind bars in foreign jails. In this new justice, the big terrorists are granted privileges, and the other missing prisoners, subtracted from the public record, are disappeared off the face of the earth. That's the mathematics of torture.

Stephen Grey is the author of "Ghost Plane: the inside story of the CIA's secret rendition programme " published by C Hurst & Co

14 European countries admit allowing the CIA to run secret prisons or carry out renditions on their territory

7,000+ prisoners have been captured in America's war on terror

450 prisoners are thought to be held at Guantanamo

10 prisoners at Guantanamo have been convicted

40 countries have citizens held in Guantanamo

$18,000 was spent by two alleged CIA agents at the Milan-Savoy hotel during an illegal rendition operation in Italy

Research by Maria Stella

This article first appeared in the New Statesman.

Under the plea agreement, Barker received a life sentence but would not serve more than 90 years in prison, Anderson said. He will be eligible for parole in 20 years.

Barker (aged 23), showed no reaction when the sentence was read.

Earlier, Barker wept during his closing statement, accepted responsibility for the rape and killings and said violence he encountered left him "angry and mean" when it came to Iraqis.

"I want the people of Iraq to know that I did not go there to do the terrible things that I did," Barker said, his voice quivering as he began to weep.

"I do not ask anyone to forgive me today."

After Barker's sentencing, military prosecutors declined to comment because three other soldiers had yet to be tried in the case.

Barker confessed yesterday to the crimes as part of a plea agreement to avoid a possible death penalty. The deal requires him to testify against the others.

In his closing statement, Barker said Iraq made him angry and violent.

"To live there, to survive there, I became angry and mean. The mean part of me made me strong on patrols. It made me brave in firefights," Barker said.

"I loved my friends, my fellow soldiers and my leaders, but I began to hate everyone else in Iraq."

During testimony intended to show the judge that Barker could be rehabilitated, Barker's fellow soldiers described weeks with little support and sleep while manning distant checkpoints.

However, Capt. William Fischbach, the lead prosecutor, told the court that such conditions were no excuse for Barker, who led the group to the family's house, and that no one deserved such unspeakable horrors.

"This burned-out corpse that used to be a 14-year-old girl never fired bullets or lobbed mortars," Fischbach said as he held pictures of the crime scene.

"Society should not have to bear the risk of the accused among them ever again."

The killings in Mahmoudiya, a village about 20 miles south of Baghdad, were among the worst in a series of alleged attacks on civilians and other abuses by military personnel in Iraq.

The defendants are accused of burning the girl's body to conceal the crime.

Sgt Paul Cortez (aged 24), and Pfc. Jesse Spielman (aged 22), members of the 101st Airborne Division along with Barker, have also been charged. Cortez has deferred entering a plea and Spielman will appear in December. Pfc Bryan Howard (aged 19), also deferred entering a plea when he appeared in October.

Private Steven Green (aged 21), pleaded not guilty last week to civilian charges including murder and sexual assault. He was discharged from the US Army for a "personality disorder" before the allegations became known and prosecutors have yet to say whether they will pursue the death penalty against him.

In earlier testimony, Barker described in detail how he raped Abeer Qassim al-Janabi with Cortez and Green before Green killed the girl, her younger sister and parents.

"Cortez pushed her to the ground. I went towards the top of her and kind of held her hands down while Cortez proceeded to lift her dress up," he said. "Around that time I heard shots coming from a room next door."

Cortez and Spielman could face the death penalty if convicted.

Barker did not name Spielman and Howard as participants in the rape and murders but said Spielman was at the house when the assault took place and had come knowing what the others intended to do.

Prosecutors said yesterday Howard had been left behind at a checkpoint.

Embracing a former enemy that remains communist but is allowing capitalism to surge, Bush opened a four-day stay here that was fueling an already raging debate over his war policy. Democrats who won control of Congress say last week's elections validate their call for U.S. troops to start coming home soon, while Bush argues - as he did again Friday - for patience with a mission he says can't be ended until Iraq can remain stable on its own.

A baby boomer who came of age during the turbulent Vietnam era and spent the war stateside as a member of the Texas Air National Guard, the president called himself amazed by the sights of the one-time war capital. He pronounced it hopeful that the United States and Vietnam have reconciled differences after a war that ended 31 years ago when the Washington-backed regime in Saigon fell.

"My first reaction is history has a long march to it, and societies change and relationships can constantly be altered to the good," Bush said after speeding past signs of both poverty and the commerce produced by Asia's fastest-growing economy.

The president said there was much to be learned from the divisive Vietnam War - the longest conflict in U.S. history - as his administration contemplates new strategies for the increasingly difficult war in Iraq, now in its fourth year. But his critics see parallels with Vietnam - a determined insurgency and a death toll that has drained public support - that spell danger for dragging out U.S. involvement in Iraq.

"It's just going to take a long period of time for the ideology that is hopeful - and that is an ideology of freedom - to overcome an ideology of hate," Bush said after having lunch at his lakeside hotel with Australian Prime Minister John Howard, whose country has been one of America's strongest allies in Iraq, Vietnam and other conflicts.

"We'll succeed," Bush added, "unless we quit."

In a day of meetings with Vietnamese leaders, the Vietnam-Iraq comparisons gave way to a focus on areas of cooperation. Those include continuing military-to-military links, work on AIDS and bird flu, trade, and cooperation on information about more than 1,300 U.S. military personnel still unaccounted for from the Vietnam War.

Bush was visiting the U.S. military's Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command here on Saturday.

He met in succession with Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet at the bright orange presidential palace, with Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung next door, and with the country's most powerful leader, Communist Party chief Nong Duc Manh, at the ruling party headquarters across the street. Each time, he and his hosts sat under a large bronze bust of Ho Chi Minh, the victorious North's revolutionary communist leader.

Nong said the president had "opened a new page in the relationship."

In the evening, Bush was feted at a state banquet.

"For decades, you had been torn apart by war," Bush said, toasting his hosts. "Today the Vietnamese people are at peace and seeing the benefits of reform."

The president's welcome by the public was much less enthusiastic than the rock-star treatment afforded
President Clinton when he came in 2000. Happy crowds thronged Clinton, who normalized relations with Vietnam.

But Bush encountered a country where many with long memories deeply disapprove of the U.S. invasion of Iraq - even as they yearn for continued economic progress to stamp out still-rampant poverty.

With all traffic halted, many Hanoi residents gaped at his long motorcade from their motorbikes. Other clusters of onlookers gathered before storefronts, a few waving but most merely looking on impassively.

Huynh Tuyet, 71, a North Vietnamese veteran who had his hand blown off fighting the Americans, recalled his own lesson.

"Even though the Americans were more powerful with all their massive weapons, the main factor in war is the people," he said. "The Vietnamese people were very determined. We would not give up. That's why we won."

Vietnamese officials eager for their country to take its turn in the global spotlight expressed disappointment that the president arrived without his expected gift - congressional approval of a new pact normalizing trade relations with Vietnam.

Surprising the White House, Congress failed to pass the bill this week as expected, leaving U.S. officials trying to explain to the Vietnamese that it would be sure to go through next month.

The visit was a delicate balancing act for Bush. He was trying to improve relations with a crucial Asian economic force and to urge Vietnam to make further steps toward political, economic and social reforms - even as his mere presence conferred special status on a communist government.

Inside the sprawling Communist Party headquarters, the president gently pressed his hosts on the need for greater political and religious freedoms. He was reinforcing this point Sunday with a visit to a Hanoi church, similar to a stop he made last year on a trip to communist China.

After remaining in Hanoi for a massive summit of 21 Pacific Rim leaders, Bush was traveling on Monday to Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon and the country's economic heart, where he was showcasing Vietnam's booming economy with a visit to its stock exchange and discussions with business leaders. He was also going to a medical institute there that focuses on bird flu and AIDS research and taking in a cultural performance at a local museum.

On the sidelines of the summit, Bush was drawing on his powers of personal diplomacy in one-on-one meeting with Russia's Vladimir Putin, China's Hu Jintao, Japan's Shinzo Abe and South Korea's Roh Moo-hyun.

The two gunman in the northeast Connecticut town of Putnam confronted 15 to 20 people standing outside a Wal-Mart store shortly after 3 a.m. and demanded money, said State Police Lt. J. Paul Vance.

"One of the patrons resisted. That patron was shot," Vance said.

He said the two gunmen fled after shooting Michael Penkala, 21, of Webster, Mass., in the chest and shoulder. Penkala was in stable condition at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester, Mass., with injuries not believed to be life threatening, Vance said.

Vance said police were searching for the suspects, both believed to be in their teens. He said one was wearing a ski mask and brandishing a handgun, and the other had what appeared to be a shotgun.

Aside from the police tape, things had returned to normal by midmorning at the Wal-Mart store in rural Putnam, a town of about 9,000 residents near the Massachusetts and Rhode Island borders.

Short supplies of the PS3 and strong demand led to lines of buyers, some waiting for days, outside stores across the country.

In Palmdale, Calif., authorities shut down a Super Wal-Mart after some shoppers got rowdy late Wednesday. In West Bend, Wis., a 19-year-old man was injured when he ran into a pole racing with 50 others for one of 10 spots outside a Wal-Mart.

In Lexington, Ky., someone fired BB pellets from a passing vehicle at people waiting outside a Best Buy store, according to WKYT, whose own reporter said she was among four people grazed while she interviewed buyers in line.

A Best Buy in Boston, aware it had only 140 of the consoles, got smart about the big sale - its employees gave out tickets to the first 140 people in line so everyone could go home until the store opened.

Tabatabainejad declined to comment. He was arrested Tuesday night and cited by campus police for resisting and obstructing a police officer and was released.

The incident was the third videotape of an arrest to surface in the last week in Los Angeles.

One video showed a Los Angeles Police Department officer dousing a handcuffed suspect in the face with pepper spray as the suspect sat in a patrol car.

The actual language of the law still needs to be drafted and will likely come back to the council either in December or early next year.

"We have a tremendous opportunity here. We need to pass as stringent a law as we can, I would like to make it illegal," said Councilman Dave Warden. "What if every city did this, image how many lives would be saved? If we can do one little thing here at this level it will matter."

Armed with growing evidence that second-hand smoke causes negative health effects, the council chose to pursue the strictest law possible and deal with any legal challenges later. Last month, the council said it wanted to pursue a law similar to ones passed in Dublin and the Southern California city of Calabasas. It took up the cause after a citizen at a senior living facility requested smoke be declared a public nuisance, allowing him to sue neighbors who smoke.

The council was concerned about people smoking in multi-unit residences.

"I would just like to say 'no smoking' and see what happens and if they do smoke, [someone] has the right to have the police come and give them a ticket," said Councilwoman Coralin Feierbach.

The council's decision garnered applause from about 15 people who showed up in support of the ordinance. One woman stood up and blew kisses to the council, another pumped his fist with satisfaction.

"I'm astounded. I admire their courage and unanimous support," said Serena Chen, policy director of the American Lung Association of California.

Chen has worked in this area since 1991 and helped many cities and counties pass no smoking policies, but not one has been willing to draft a complete ban.

"I feel like the revolution is taking place and I am trying to catch up," Chen told the council.

The decision puts Belmont on the forefront of smoking policy and it is already attracting attention from other states.

"You have the ability to do something a little more extraordinary than Dublin or Calabasas. I see what they've done as five or six on the Richter Scale. What the citizens of Belmont, and of America, need is five brave people to do something that's a seven or eight on the Richter Scale," said Philip Henry Jarosz of the Condominium Council of Maui.

"The whole state of Hawaii is watching" he said.

Councilman Warren Lieberman said he was concerned the city will pass a law it cannot enforce because residents will still smoke unless police are specifically called to a situation. Police cannot go out and enforce smoking rules, he said.

"It makes us hypocrites by saying you know you can break the law if no one is watching," Lieberman said.

However, both Feierbach and Warden argued it is the same as jaywalking, having a barking dog or going 10 miles over the speed limit. All are illegal, but seldom enforced.

"You can't walk down the street with a beer, but you can have a cigarette," Warden said. "You shouldn't be allowed to do that. I just think it shouldn't be allowed anywhere except in someone's house. If you want to do that, that's fine."

Michael Kopper, once the top aide to Enron chief financial officer Andrew Fastow, received three years and one month in prison Friday. Mark Koenig, Enron's former investor relations director, was sentenced to 18 months.

Prosecutors had asked that Kopper and Koenig be given reduced sentences for their cooperation in helping to convict Enron founder Kenneth Lay and former chief executive Jeffrey Skilling.

The men were sentenced separately by U.S. District Judge Ewing Werlein Jr.