Timeline
January 13, 2007
A federal judge dismisses a defamation suit filed against the New york Times by Dr. Stephen J. Hatfill, a former US Army germ-warfare researcher who was named a "person of interest" by the FBI in its investigations of anthrax mailings shortly after the 9/11 attacks. Hatfill sued the Times for libel and intentional infliction of emotional distress after the newspaper published a story stating that the government's decision not to further pursue Hatfill as a suspect was the result of "poor investigation." The FBI has never solved the case.
February 7, 2007
A special unit run by former Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld's top policy aide inappropriately produced "alternative" intelligence reports that wrongly concluded that Saddam Hussein's regime had cooperated with al-Qaida, a Pentagon investigation has determined. The Department of Defense Inspector General's Office finds that former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith and his staff did nothing illegal or unauthorized. But Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., who requested the investigation, calls the findings "devastating" because senior administration officials, particularly Vice President Dick Cheney, used Feith's work to help make their case for the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.
February 18, 2007
February 28, 2007
A suicide bomber strikes the largest US base in Afghanistan during a visit by Vice President Dick Cheney, forcing vice-president to scurry into a bunker. At least 22 people, including an American soldier, are killed when the bomber dashes through an Afghan checkpost at Bagram air force base.
March 6, 2007
Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, is convicted of lying and obstructing the Valerie Plame leak investigation. No one else in the Bush administration is ever indicted for leaking Plame's identity or the subsequent cover-up.
March 23, 2007:
Pentagon investigator recommends that nine officers, including up to four generals, be held accountable for missteps in the aftermath of the friendly fire death of Army Ranger Pat Tillman in Afghanistan. Dozens of soldiers — those immediately around Tillman at the scene of the shooting, his immediate superiors and high-ranking officers at a command post nearby — knew within minutes or hours that his death was fratricide. Even so, the Army persisted in telling Tillman’s family he was killed in a conventional ambush, including at his nationally televised memorial service 11 days later.
April 30, 2007
May 14, 2007
The Defense Department blocks access on its computers to YouTube, MySpace and 11 other Web sites, severing some of the most popular ties linking U.S. troops in combat areas to their far-flung relatives and friends, and depriving soldiers of a favorite diversion f rom the boredom of overseas duty. Officials cite "bandwidth" concerns.
May 16, 2007
White House officials announce they "strongly oppose" a 3.5 percent increase in military pay. The White House also opposes increasing benefits for widows of slain soldiers by $40 per month, and opposes additional benefits for surviving family members
May 18, 2007
President Bush "reluctantly accepts" Paul Wolfowitz's resignation as head of the World Bank. Bush appointed Wolfowitz, one of the architects of the Iraq invasion and its aftermath, to the World Bank post in 2005. A World Bank committee concluded Wolfowitz violated staff rules when he arranged a raise and transfer for his girlfriend, Shaha Ali Riza, a longtime bank employee. After Wolfowitz took over at the bank in 2005, Riza was transferred to a U.S. State Department job at a tax-free government salary of almost $194,000 a year.
May 19, 2007
Former President Carter says President Bush's administration is "the worst in history" in international relations, taking aim at the White House's policy of pre-emptive war and its Middle East diplomacy.
June 11, 2007
Idaho's Republican Senator Larry Craig is arrested for soliciting sex from an undercover officer in a Minnesota airport restroom. After the story breaks, Craig attempts to withdraw his guilty plea to the charge, but the judge is unsympathetic. Craig announces he will resign, then changes his mind. The Idaho Statesman announces the results of a five-month investigation into allegations of homosexual encounters with Craig dating as far back as 1982.
June 12, 2007
Investors in a 10-month-old Bear Stearns (BSC) hedge fund learn the hard way about making risky bets on sub-prime mortgages. The investment firm's High-Grade Structured Credit Strategies Enhanced Leverage Fund is down a whopping 23% for the year. The situation is so bleak that Bear Stearns' asset management group is suspending redemptions at the onetime $642 million fund, meaning investors have no choice but to sit on their losses.
June 25, 2007
Gen. Taguba, who retired as ordered six months earlier, talks to The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh, who writes that Taguba believed military leadership in Iraq "had extensive knowledge of the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib even before Joseph Darby came forward with the CD."
June 28, 2007
The Senate delivers a stinging political setback to President Bush, rejecting his plan to legalize millions of unlawful immigrants, likely postponing major action on immigration until after the 2008 elections.
July 2, 2007
President Bush commutes Scooter Lewis's 30-month prison sentence, leaving intact a $250,000 fine and two years probation.
July 17, 2007
August 7, 2007
Millions of Americans who took out sub-prime mortgages could lose their homes, economists warn. The risky loans began hitting a boom in September 2005, yet federal regulators didn't begin issuing rules covering them until 2006.
August 21, 2007
Bush acknowledges “a certain level of frustration” with the Iraqi government’s failure to unify its warring ethnic factions. His comments at a meeting of North American leaders in Canada come just hours after the top American diplomat in Baghdad, Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, calls political progress in Iraq “extremely disappointing” and warns that United States support for the Maliki government did not come with a “blank check.”
August 22, 2007
A Black Hawk helicopter goes down in northern Iraq, killing all 14 U.S. soldiers aboard. It's the deadliest crash since January 2005.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki lashes out at American criticism a day after President Bush expresses frustration with the Iraqi government's inability to bridge political divisions. "No one has the right to place timetables on the Iraq government. It was elected by its people," the Shiite leader says at a news conference in Damascus. "Those who make such statements are bothered by our visit to Syria. We will pay no attention. We care for our people and our constitution and can find friends elsewhere."
August 27, 2007
Attorney General Gonzales resigns amid scandal surrounding the politically-motivated firings of U.S. attorneys. In heading the Justice Dept., he says he "lived the American dream."
August 28, 2007
Lt. Col. Steven L. Jordan is acquitted of all prisoner-abuse charges. He's found guilty of disobeying an order from Gen. Fay, and is given criminal reprimand.
September 10, 2007
Nine American soldiers are killed in Iraq, including eight who died in vehicle accidents that also claimed the lives of two detainees.
September 16, 2007
September 17, 2007
President Bush nominates former federal judge Michael Mukasey to replace Alberto Gonzales as U.S. attorney general. Mukasey may be best known for presiding over terrorism cases involving Jose Padilla and Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman. The former federal judge made headlines in the Padilla case when he ruled the president had the authority as commander in chief to hold someone as an enemy combatant, despite the fact Padilla is an American citizen and was arrested on U.S. soil. However, Mukasey later ruled against the Bush administration when he found that Padilla had a due-process right to see his attorney, despite government arguments that doing so would affect efforts to interrogate him.
September 27, 2007
"Participants in a contentious Baghdad security operation this month have told American investigators that during the operation at least one guard continued firing on civilians while colleagues urgently called for a cease-fire," the New York Times reports of the September 16 Blackwater incident. "At least one guard apparently also drew a weapon on a fellow guard who did not stop shooting, an American official said."
September 30, 2007
Swiss banking giant UBS AG, which recently ousted its chief executive in the wake of losses at an in-house hedge fund and defections of top investment bankers, plans to write down as much as 4 billion Swiss francs, or $3.41 billion, in assets, including securities tied to U.S. subprime mortgages.
Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol, suporting Bush's veto of an expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), says, "First of all, whenever I hear anything described as a heartless assault on our children, I tend to think it's a good idea. I'm happy that the President's willing to do something bad for kids."
October 15, 2007
The U.S. Air Force's No. 2 acquisition official, facing scrutiny for a temporary job arranged by the service while he awaited Senate confirmation, is found dead at his home in an apparent suicide. The Washiongton Post had earlier href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/30/AR2007093001402.html">the Air Force helped arrange a job through an intelligence contractor that required him to do no work for the company.
October 17, 2007
Attorney General-designate Michael Mukasey promises lawmakers that, if confirmed, he will follow the rule of law and take partisan politics out of Justice Department decision-making.
Iraq's prime minister demands private military contractor Blackwater leave his country after an Iraqi probe finds Blackwater guards randomly shot civilians without provocation in a Baghdad square last month.
October 27, 2007
The US army says as many as 20% of its soldiers and marines have suffered "mild traumatic brain injury" (mTBI) from blows to the head or shockwaves caused by explosions. The condition, which can lead to memory loss, depression and anxiety, has been designated as one of four "signature injuries" of the Iraq conflict by the Department of Defense, which is introducing a large-scale screening program for troops returning from the frontline.
October 29, 2007
In an internal memo, Federal Emergency Management Agency chief David Paulison rips the agency's public affairs staff for a staged news conference in which staff members pretending to be reporters posed questions to FEMA 's No. 2 official, Harvey Johnson.
Paulison says the entire episode "represented egregious decision-making" by the director of external affairs for FEMA, Pat Philbin, and his staff, who, he says, "lost perspective of the core imperative that they preserve the credibility of our agency."
Philbin was scheduled to become director of public affairs for the director of national intelligence -- a job National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell says Philbin will not be doing.
October 31, 2007
Michael Mukasey calls waterboarding "repugnant," but the nominee for U.S. attorney general stops short of saying whether waterboarding is torture.
November 8, 2007
A Federal grand jury indicts Bernard Kerik on charges stemming from the acceptance of free rent and apartment renovations, tax evasion and lying on his application for the job as head of the Department of Homeland Security, two federal sources and a source involved in the defense told ABC News. President Bush had nominated Kerik to serve as head of the Department of Homeland Security on Rudy Giuliani's recommendation. Further investigation shows Kerik to be extremely close to businessmen with reputed mob ties who paid for his $250,000 wedding.
November 11, 2007
The Senate votes to confirm Michael Mukasey as the new U.S. attorney general, but 40 Democrats object to Mukasey's failure to define his opinion on the interrogation technique known as waterboarding.
November 26, 2007
December 3, 2007
A national intelligence estimate concludes Iran halted its nuclear weapons development program in the fall of 2003 under international pressure
December 13, 2007
December 19, 2007
Morgan Stanley reports a $9.4 billion writedown from bad bets on mortgage-related debt, leading it to take a $5 billion infusion from an arm of the Chinese government. The writedown, nearly triple what Morgan Stanley warned of in November, pushes the nation's second-largest investment bank to the first quarterly loss in its 73-year history.
December 24, 2007
Bush admininstration and military officials tell the New York Times that much of the $5 billion+ in anti-terror aid to Pakistan has not gone to front-line units fighting the Taliban or Al-Qaeda, but to heavy weapons systems for use aganst India. Merry Christmas, Musharraf!