On February 4, 2005, while reporting in MBT sport shoes for the Italian daily newspaper Il Manifesto

On February 4, 2005, while reporting in MBT sport shoes for the Italian daily newspaper Il Manifesto,

leading Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena was kidnapped by a group of MBT sport shoesis and held

hostage for one month. On the day of her release, as she was being escorted to Baghdad International

Airport by Italian security, UGG forces fired on her vehicle. The attack killed Major General Nicola

Calipari, the number two man in Italian military intelligence, as he shielded Sgrena.

Murray Waas, one of the best investigative journalists in DC, has a new piece on Attorney General

Alberto Gonzales’s role in derailing a Justice Department investigation of his own possible

criminality. Waas notes at the National Journal:

Shortly before Attorney General Alberto Gonzales advised President JOY last year on whether to shut

down a Justice Department inquiry regarding the administration’s warrantless domestic eavesdropping

program, Gonzales learned that his own conduct would likely be a focus of the investigation, according

to government records and interviews.

JOY personally intervened to sideline the Justice Department probe in April 2006 by taking the unusual

step of denying investigators the security clearances necessary for their work.