Ghadiri explained,

These are the bullets that the CIA and terrorist groups use. Of course they warned that there would be a bloodshed in these demonstrations and then they could attribute that to the Islamic republic. This is part of a common act of CIA in various countries.

He wouldn't lay the blame directly at the feet of the CIA, instead saying,

I'm not saying that the CIA had done this. There are different groups. Could be intelligence services, could be CIA, could be the terrorists. However, these are the people who do these things.

Ghadiri's equivocation aside, it's clear that the Iranian government is trying to turn the outrage over Neda's death away from itself and onto its adversaries. In an odd turn of events, another source of information about the killing turns out to be Brazilian novelist Paul Coelho, who happens to be friends with the doctor who saved Neda. Coelho recognized Dr. Arash Hejazi in the video of Neda's death, and began an e-mail exchange; the e-mails are published in the Times of London. Hejazi writes,

The video of Neda's murder was taken by my friend, and you can recognize me in the video. I was the doctor who tried to save her and failed. She died in my arms. I am writing with tears in my eyes.

In a later message, he says,

Trying to leave the country tomorrow morning. If I don't arrive in London at 2 pm, something has happened to me. Till then, wait. Please wait till tomorrow. If something happens to me, please take care of my wife and son, they are there, alone, and have no one else in the world.

Luckily, Hejazi did arrive in London, but his fear speaks to the repressiveness of the Iranian regime, especially in the wake of Neda's death. Ghadiri told Blitzer,

We have no problem with mournings. Naturally we don't want to provide an opportunity for the rioters to come in and make the situation worse.

But guards at Neda's grave are making it difficult for Iranians to gather and talk to one another there. Mourners are visiting the grave anyway, but one says,

Now the military has taken the power and prevents us from paying our respects. It's not a big request! We want respect to Neda.

Speaking for all Iranians during this chaotic time, he also says, "All of us are in danger, like Neda."

Image by artist Tim O'Brien.

"The CIA Killed Neda" [Daily Dish]
Emails Between Doctor At Iran Shooting And Writer Who Posted Video [TimesOnline]
Iranians Pay Respects At Neda Agha-Soltan's Grave [LA Times]

• In news that will resonate with parents everywhere, Sasha and Malia Obama are apparently shirking their doggie duties at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Says mom: "I'm still up at 5:15 a.m. taking my dog out." [People]

• Speaking of dog fights, despite the protestations of his colleagues, Supreme Court Justice David Souter - who was instrumental in preventing the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 1992 - is planning to retire at the end of the Court's current term, this June. Prepare for more wingnuttery, i.e. a highly entertaining confirmation battle. [NY Times]
• Three (female) names being bandied about as Souter's replacement: Sonia Sotomayor, Diane P. Wood, Elena Kagan. Oh, and these formidable ladies: Kathleen M. Sullivan, Kim McLane Wardlaw, Jennifer M. Granholm, Leah Ward Sears. [Washington Post]
• More details on the female contenders, here: [The Nation]
• Notre Dame will not be awarding its top honor during commencement this year: its intended recipient, law professor and anti-choicer Mary Ann Glendon, turned it down in protest over the decision to have President Obama speak to the university's graduates. [Time]
• Other Catholics are not so up in arms: according to a poll, only 25% oppose the university's decision to invite the President to speak. [US News]
• In less surprising survey results, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reports that churchgoers are more likely to support torturing terror suspects. There's a blasphemous joke about the Crucifixion to be made here, but I'm not the one to make it. [CNN]
• The truth about the United States' torture program continues to seep out: Two of its architects, psychologists and former military men Bruce Jensen and Jim Mitchell, boasted about being paid $1,000 a day to oversee the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" techniques. [ABC News]
• Guess who's still not talking about the CIA's interrogation memos? [LA Times]
• No surprise here: "Now, the recent release of Justice Department memos authorizing the use of harsh interrogation techniques has given [Abu Ghraib guard Charles] Graner and other soldiers new reason to argue that they were made scapegoats for policies approved at high levels." [Washington Post]
• Get me a truth commission! Does Peggy Noonan's latest torturous WSJ column compare the country's chief executive to the unnamed romantic interest in a famous Roberta Flack/Fugees song? [WSJ]
• Michael "Heckuva Job" Brownie is criticizing the Obama Administration's response to the threat of swine flu, alleging that the threat level has been raised because the White House wants more "attention" and "legitimacy". A suggestion for Mr. Brown: Stop while you're ahead. Oh, and the WHO raises the threat level, not the White House. [US News]
• How long before Daily Show editors or some enterprising videographer makes a response to this absolutely insane "rebranding" video cooked up by the GOP? [Politico]

Programming note: Megan is ailing today, hence the different byline - and completely boring, straightforward take - on the items in the News at 10 post. My apologies.

• Hank Williams Jr., who we started studiously ignoring after he murdered our national anthem during a Palin rally, has decided that he's not quite done with being part of a losing campaign and will challenge Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander in the primary for the 2010 race. [Politico]
• Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Cindy Lederman today threw out Florida's 31-year-old law prohibiting LGBT Floridians from adopting children, noting that there was no scientific evidence to support the ban and Florida allows LGBT people to foster children. The state plans to appeal. [Wall Street Journal]
• Barack Obama is adopting, too, and not just a puppy — he's adopting current Defense Secretary Robert Gates for his own Administration. [ABC News]

• Obama also named David Orszag, currently head of the Congressional Budget Office, to head up his Office of Management and the Budget. He will be the first blogger to join the Administration. [The Hill, Washington Post]
• One person who won't be part of the Administration is former CIA official John Brennan, who took himself out of the running for any Administration position after being pilloried on the blogosphere for stuff he wasn't a part of. [Washington Independent]
• If you were missing Sarah Palin, she's all over the news today, between receiving an award from Field and Stream, heading to Georgia to campaign for Saxby Chambliss and being laughed at by South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford. [Politico, New York Times, Huffington Post]
• Joe The Motherfucking Plumber is back on the teevees, too, hawking digital converter boxes. When will those two crazy kids ever get it together and admit they belong together... and out of my field of vision? [Wonkette]
• Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal hopes it's soon, so he can kick his Presidential campaign into high gear at last. Yeah, we're turning into that kind of political system. [LA Times]
• Not that this election is actually over yet, as Al Franken's just a little concerned that some officials are squirreling away valid ballots to keep Norm Coleman in office. You'd think it was a paranoid fantasy, but he's got video. [Politico]

• Stephen Price is the senior writer for the Tallahassee Democrat (no relation to the Party) and tends to stick out just a touch when in a scrum of mostly-white political reporters. Last week at a McCain rally, he stuck out so much that a McCain staffer asked him and his legitimate press credential to leave. McCain's staff says it's because he was a state reporter, since, you know, McCain doesn't care that much about his local and state press coverage. [HuffPo, HuffPo]
• By the way, the Swift Boat guys are back and now they've got books! And mass e-mails! And virtually no credibility! [Washington Post]
• Speaking of lacking in credibility, House Republicans are claiming that their protest against House Speaker Pelosi's decision not to bring a drilling bill to the floor is lowering gas prices! [HuffPo]

• In still more barely believable news, apparently the letter that was the only supposed documented link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda is probably a CIA forgery. When do we stop calling the intelligence there "faulty" and start calling it "manufactured"? Was that letter, at least, manufactured in a mobile lab?[Washington Independent]
• But, hey, at least Stephen Price isn't a Japanese reporter trying to cover the Beijing Olympics. In China, they don't "escort" you away from what you're trying to report on, they beat you up and haul you off in violation of China's supposed agreement on press freedoms. But they're really sorry! They promise it won't happen again until at least tomorrow! [Boston Globe]
• And to make us seem more sorry, a U.S. Olympic Committee official reportedly bitched out the four cyclists who arrived in China for the Olympics today wearing the face masks issued to them... by the USOC. What, did Bush get to appoint a bunch of incompetent assholes there, too? [NY Times]

MOE: oh here you are...

MEGAN: As always, right here, just multitasking and reading crap on the internet

MOE: I just remembered it was my afternoon off which is really fucking good because I am totally out of ADD drugs again and um, I had to get really wasted last night.

MEGAN: Yeah, I'm taking the afternoon off as well, but mostly so that I can drive back to D.C.

MEGAN: So, want to see the shittiest ads of the Presidential race so far?

MOE: Oh Jesus. Oh fucking Jesus. Okay, let's play a game: what's more depressing?You knew we were holding Saudis, Yemenis and Pakistanis without evidence in Gitmo, but did you know about the Chinese???

MOE: There are 16 Uighurs there, picked up mostly in Afghanistan after they got sick of the Chinese oppressing them.

MEGAN: Aw, dude, we have 16 Uighurs? Great. How much you want to bet that the Chinese got their intel on the Uighur terrorist threat against the Olympics that they used to justify further oppression from us?

MEGAN: Oh, wait, that was easy. Here's an article about it from the Voice of America, which is America's radio station abroad.

MOE: Yeah aren't we not allowed to listen to VOA in America because it's propaganda? And yes the Chinese assistance in the war on terror is very invaluable to our struggle against Muslim extremism which is the worst problem a country has ever faced in the history of modern statehood!

MEGAN: "They" will destabilize our government if we let "them," so we must protect the most important parts from destabilization, and the Bill of Rights is only, like, the 3rd most important document, definitely.

MEGAN: It doesn't say anything about the pursuit of happiness or executive privilege.

MOE: I love this headline: Judges Cite Need for Reliable Evidence To Hold Detainees …

MOE: it's like something you'd read in the daily newspaper of some fledgling democracy!

MOE: here

MEGAN: Judges Ask Administration To Stick To Principles On Which Country Founded, Not Dismantle Democracy In The Name Of Security

MEGAN: Well, if we want to stick to depressing news, how about a Biblical justification for attacking Michelle Obama (and, basically, every Jezebel) for defying God himself by not being subservient and thereby attacking Barack for not being godly enough to appropriately control his wife?

MOE: Dude apropos of absolutely nothing while I try to slog through the Gail Sheehy piece on Hillaryland and the Sy Hersh piece on Iran under the influence of absolutely no drugs check.out. this outfit. It looks like something Huma Abedin might recommend!

MEGAN: Dude, don't slog, I can break that shit down for you.

MEGAN: 1: Hillary and Bill hired a bunch of people who didn't get along, thinking that was a great campaign strategy. Like her Senate office and, frankly, the Bush Administration, it was a insular group of people used to defending the hordes.

MEGAN: 2. Mark Penn sucks and blames everyone else for his failing.

MEGAN: 3. Everyone hates Mark Penn, who used to privately call Bill Clinton when he couldn't convince Hillary or the other staff to do what he wanted because he's a tattle-taling bitch.

MOE: Also there was this

He sounded giddy, recalls Congressman Altmire. "'We’re going to win Ohio for sure, and Texas looks good, and we’re coming to Pennsylvania 'he said. ‘Keep your powder dry. Don’t endorse anybody—just wait it out.’?"The flattered first-term congressman said he was concerned that Senator Clinton might not play well on the top of the ticket. "President Bush won my district twice … "

Clinton interrupted him. "How well did I do in your district?"

"You won it twice."

"Well, there you go," Clinton said, gloating."

There was silence for a while, and Clinton assumed he had won his case."

"With all due respect," Altmire finally said, "you’re not on the ballot this year."

MOE: NEITHER IS ROSS PEROT!

MEGAN: 4. Ickes is pissed that Mark Penn made $20 million dollars, sucked, ran roughshod over him and still went out of his way to take politically untouchable clients (i.e., the Colombian government).

MEGAN: 5. The chunky Chicos necklaces and jewel-toned pantsuits were all the fault of Huma Abedin who is herself impeccably dressed, so she's now the world's biggest underminer.

MEGAN: 6. Hillary's make-up artist matched her eyeshadow to her suit jackets.

MEGAN: 7. Mark Penn railed against Hillary every showing emotion because he is at his core a sexist pig who doesn't believe women can be women and still President EVEN THOUGH that's the times when she connected best with voters.

MEGAN: 8. Both Clinton's undertook a concerted effort to pressure Obama into taking her as VP to the horror of most other Democrats who found it unseemly

MEGAN: 9. Patti Solis Doyle was ousted because they were out of money, not that they were out of money, per se, they were just out of primary money because donors can give $2300 to the primaries and $2300 to the general election campaign.

MEGAN: 10. Reporters were all drunk on the plane between Iowa and New Hampshire.

MEGAN: 11. Mark Penn sucks some more and is insufferably arrogant.

MEGAN: The end!

MOE: Okay so far on this. 1. Bush wants "regime change" and he's paid $400 million to fund it so far but that doesn't get you so far.

MOE: 2. There's some group called the Baluchis who are going to help us out because, you know, they're SUNNI.

MEGAN: !. Not in a country with oil it doesn't. In Cuba maybe.

MOE: 3. Some Democrats have gone along with this TREASON

MEGAN: 2. Not that McCain knows the difference between that and Shi'ites

MEGAN: 3. Um, they totally did, like they always do. Bush gives good belly rubs!

MOE: 4. The Joint Chiefs are not fans of this plan.

MOE: 5. Admiral William Fallon: I want to have his babies.

MEGAN: 4. The Joint Chiefs don't want their military legacies to be tons more soldiers dying in a pointless war.

MEGAN: 5. I'll leave that one to you. I wouldn't want to quit drinking for 9 months.

MOE: You don't have to completely quit, and definitely not for the whole nine months! Also you don't keep it down very well in the first few months of pregnancy anyway.

MEGAN: Yeah, I've heard that, though it reportedly depends on the woman. Also, with my personal history of (probably but not definitely developmental) birth defects, I probably would have to be way stricter than average.

MOE: But also I was not actually saying that literally just in response to:

Too many people believe you have to be either for or against the Iranians,” he told me. “Let’s get serious. Eighty million people live there, and everyone’s an individual. The idea that they’re only one way or another is nonsense.”

When it came to the Iraq war, Fallon said, “Did I bitch about some of the things that were being proposed? You bet. Some of them were very stupid.”

MEGAN: Yeah, that is pretty fucking sexy. I'd hit it.

MOE: 6. There are some laws, about how Congress needs to hear about it if the CIA declares war on The Iran, because Congress is where the CIA would get money to do such a thing, but the Bush Administration maybe doesn't know about those laws, because they are still operating from the rule book that they were using when United Fruit chipped in most of the $$ for regime changes andsuch, only instead of United Fruit they are maybe finding another source for the money. (Bernanke?)

MOE:

"The agency says we’re not going to get in the position of helping to kill people without a Finding," the former senior intelligence official told me. He was referring to the legal threat confronting some agency operatives for their involvement in the rendition and alleged torture of suspects in the war on terror. "This drove t"the over-all authorization includes killing, but it’s not as though that’s what they’re setting out to do. It’s about gathering information, enlisting support."

And how are you going to enlist support if you don't kill a few evildoers here and there???

MEGAN: More likely Chevron.

MEGAN: And, obviously, if you didn't mean to kill them, it's, like, totally ok. Casualties of an undeclared war, man.

MOE: 7. There is some group called the Gang of Eight that includes Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and John Rockefeller and it occurred to me that I forgot the members of the Gang of Four besides Jiang Qing. You always remember the girl involved in something like that. BTW God bless YouTube!

MEGAN: I mean, the problem with getting a declaration of war is that no President has really ever bothered. They get an authorization to do whatever the fuck they want to do and then use it, bypassing Congress's constitutional powers in that regard.

MEGAN: His hip thrusting is kind of freaking me out, man.

MOE: Ew yeah I know…if cheap wine is doing that to him…btw Admiral Fallon's nickname is "Fox". Silver fox!

MOE:

"Fox said that there’s a lot of strange stuff going on in Special Ops, and I told him he had to figure out what they were really doing," Fallon’s colleague said. "The Special Ops guys eventually figured out they needed Fox, and so they began to talk to him. Fox would have won his fight with Special Ops but for Cheney."

The Pentagon consultant said, "Fallon went down because, in his own way, he was trying to prevent a war with Iran, and you have to admire him for that."

MEGAN: He really just does get foxier the more you read.

MOE: 8. Were we speaking of cheap wine? Because there was an explosion someplace in The Iran called "Shiraz."

MEGAN: Which the Australians pronounce Shur-azz instead of Shur-ahz

MOE: 9. Oh yeah, remember Mossadegh? Weird how you can't spell that name without "Mossad." Anyway he's briefly mentioned, not by name but I always wondered what happened to him and turns out he stayed under house arrest until 1967. He was TIME's Man of the Year in 1951. Dude old Timestyle was soooo trippy.

MOE:

For all its power, the West in 1951 failed to cope with a weeping, fainting leader of a helpless country; the West had not yet developed the moral muscle to define its own goals and responsibilities in the Middle East. Until the West did develop that moral muscle, it had no chance with the millions represented by Mossadegh.

Hahahah they sure found some growth hormones for that whole "moral muscle" problem!

MEGAN: But, like steroids, it kind of rots your brain and shrinks your testes and makes you pissed off and gives you unsightly acne. Or whatever the foreign policy equivalent of those things are.

MOE: 9. We are overestimating the amount of ethnic tension we can stir up in Iran because the Baluchis really hate the government but actually, the "Baluchis" according to Robert Baer, is just a more Italian family restaurant chain sounding name for Al Qaeda, and they are bad dudes who cut people's heads off and shit, no lie, KLS is a Baluchi, and so is Ramzi Yousef.

MEGAN: Oh, but, like usual, we'll just pay them now and depose them later!

MOE: 10. Then there is some Tufts professor who tells us about a violent Al Qaeda funded resistance movement called the Iranian People's Resistance Movement and wouldn't it just figure with a name like that they are supposedly connected to the "drug culture."

MEGAN: Wait, so there are two al Qaeda's in Iran? Nice.

MOE: 11. Probably more, but then there are some Kurdish groups too, and they all get shitloads of money from the CIA for doing absolutely nothing, and I think I just decided what to do with my life or at least the next year of it. "My Year In The Iranian Resistance." How about it Megan? We'd totes get famous. Angie and I were going to try to get a defense contract a la Efraim Diveroli but her boyfriend said it was probably too late for that. Her boyfriend who works, in the Pentagon, for a defense contractor. I wonder how much money the most highly remunerated person in the Pentagon makes. Anyway. Also I forgot to mention it but

MEGAN: Dude, I'm all up for going on the government cheese, especially if it's someplace cool like Iran and we could get a book deal out of it!

MOE: 12. Al Qaeda has money too and they're sending it to Algeria, maybe because it's the home of Zacarias Moussaoui and he was a hoot.

MEGAN: Well, if you're not talking defense contractors, the most highly remunerated person at the Pentagon is the SecDef.

MEGAN: Well, I guess that means al Qaeda doesn't like Sarko. If they're spending money their they must be recruiting there, and if they're recruiting there, I'm thinking Paris. They haven't had an attack yet, but we have, the UK has and Spain has.

MOE: No I am talking defense contractors. Also Pastor Pfleger I forgot to mention his appearance on GMA but he appeared on GMA.

MEGAN: Oh, well, then it's got to be, like, the CEO of Boeing or something. That's my guess.

MOE: Yeah but the CEO of Boeing ... not Mullally.. shit, I dunno, anyway, it's not important, his OFFICE is not in the Pentagon. See what I'm saying?

MEGAN: Ah, ok, I see what you're saying. I'll be the grunts who have to work in offices there still don't make more than the SecDef. I can't find his pay, but the highest guy below him makes $200,000, so I'm guessing it's about that or a little more.

• Two hotly-anticipated releases took place yesterday: A top-secret cache of CIA documents, and Paris fucking Hilton. Both involve mysterious drug use, breaking the law. Which got more media attention? Which yielded more interesting tidbits? Wait, don't answer that! But do vote in our poll of most loathsome moments in Paris after the jump!
  
• Headscratching analogy of the day: "Only the two Koreas have been rumored to reunify more than Britney Spears and Kevin Federline." Well, hm. If by "more" you mean "not really at all because one party gives new meaning to the word 'batshit'", then we see what you mean! [TMZ]
  
• One thing is clear: Rosie's kid did not inherit her looks. Otherwise, we're really confused. [Rosie's blog]
  
• The NYC club Butter had a party, all the celebrities came, and Janet Jackson was dissed by Madonna, probably because she got fat again or something. [Page Six]
  
• Brain-teasing detail from yesterday's Paristhon: A makeup artist arrived at her parents' place with a little pushcart full of cosmetics. On foot. What, does Paris not own her own cosmetics? [No, she steals the makeup of NYC gossip columnists, actually. -Ed.] Also: Who arrives on foot in LA? [Newsday]

• O.J. Simpson is a fake writer and a fake crier. [Page Six]
• Kelly Clarkson's latest album disappoints us. [Washington Post]
• Chris Benoit was to the wrestling world what Peter Braunstein was to fashion magazines. Which means: He took the whole professional-insanity thing a bit farther. [Washington Post]

• Until the nineties, being gay was grounds for dismissal from the CIA because it was considered something you could be blackmailed over, but then AIDS came along and the CIA decided that if you could get killed doing it, being gay was sort of manly and CIA-like.
• Disgraced CIA #3 Kyle "Dusty" Foggo (Jesus Christ! What is it with weird nicknames and no ethics? And isn't Kyle Foggo distinctive enough??) loved whores more than Jesus. He may have even loved them more than he loved funneling contracts to his friends' firms and was a regular at a hooker "hotbed" called Gloria's while stationed in Tegucigalpa during the Cold War. Probably to overcompensate for his surname being re-appropriated as "Faggot" as a kid.

• The only Marine ever convicted of espionage was seduced into spying for the KGB by a government whore named Violetta. These women were called "swallows"; the Marine, Clayton Lonetree, served nine years in prison after turning himself in. Some joke about Lonetree, wood, solitary confinement, blah, blah.

• Alexander Ogorodnik (yeah, a Russian) was a Soviet diplomat in Bogota, Colombia who started spying for the US when we started paying off his Colombian mistress. He was highly productive (unlike Valerie Plame, who was just okay) after returning to Moscow, where he eventually killed himself with a cyanide capsule he kept concealed in a CIA-supplied modified Montblanc pen after getting found out by the KGB, which is getting us all Hot n Hunt For Red October it's so totally fucking cool.

Sex makes men stupid. This is our takeaway. Also, maybe writer Ken Silverstein should do it with us. Wait, did we just turn into Julia Allison?

Sex and the C.I.A. [Harper's]