Politics

Reviving the 'Successful Surge' Myth

Saturday, 21 June 2014 09:21

Parry writes: "The appeal of this myth should be obvious. Nearly every 'important' person in the U.S. foreign policy establishment and the mainstream media endorsed the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 - and such well-placed and well-paid people do not like to admit that their judgment was so bad that they should be disqualified from holding any responsible position forever."

Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina. (photo: Getty Images)

Reviving the 'Successful Surge' Myth

By Robert Parry, Consortium News

21 June 14

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beloved myth of Official Washington � especially among Republicans, neocons and other supporters of the Iraq War � is the fable of the �successful surge,� how President George W. Bush�s heroic escalation of 30,000 troops in 2007 supposedly �won� that war; it then follows that the current Iraq disaster must be President Barack Obama�s fault.

The appeal of this myth should be obvious. Nearly every �important� person in the U.S. foreign policy establishment and the mainstream media endorsed the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003 � and such well-placed and well-paid people do not like to admit that their judgment was so bad that they should be disqualified from holding any responsible position forever.

Further, since almost no one who promoted this criminal and bloody enterprise was held accountable after Mission Accomplished wasn�t, these opinion leaders were still around in 2007 at the time of the �surge� and thus in a position to cite any positive trends as proof of �success.� Many are still around voicing their august opinions � the likes of Sen. John McCain, former Vice President Dick Cheney and neocon theorist Robert Kagan � so they still get to tell the rest of us how really great their judgment was.

On Wednesday, McCain fulminated from the Senate floor, accusing Obama of squandering the �surge,� the success of which he deemed a �fact.� Cheney � along with his daughter Liz � accused the President of �securing his legacy as the man who betrayed our past and squandered our freedom.�

Kagan, who pushed for an invasion of Iraq as early as 1998, attacked Obama for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq � and not committing the U.S. military to the civil war in Syria. Kagan told the New York Times: �It�s striking how two policies driven by the same desire to avoid the use of military power are now converging to create this burgeoning disaster� in Iraq.

But the core of the neocon narrative is that the 2007 �surge� essentially �won� the war in Iraq and that an open-ended U.S. military occupation of Iraq would have kept a lid on the sectarian violence that has periodically ripped the country apart since Bush�s invasion overthrew Saddam Hussein in 2003.

There is much wrong about this narrative, including that it was Bush who signed the timeline for total U.S. withdrawal in 2008 and that the Iraqi government insisted that U.S. troops depart under that schedule at the end of 2011. But the greatest fallacy is to pretend that it was Bush�s �surge� that achieved the temporary lull in the sectarian violence and that it achieved its principal goal of resolving the Sunni-Shiite divisions.

Any serious analysis of what happened in Iraq in 2007-08 would trace the decline in Iraqi sectarian violence mostly to strategies that predated the �surge� and were implemented by the U.S. commanding generals in 2006, George Casey and John Abizaid, who wanted as small a U.S. �footprint� as possible to tamp down Iraqi nationalism.

Among their initiatives, Casey and Abizaid ran a highly classified operation to eliminate key al-Qaeda leaders, most notably the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in June 2006. Casey and Abizaid also exploited growing Sunni animosities toward al-Qaeda extremists by paying off Sunni militants to join the so-called �Awakening� in Anbar Province, also in 2006.

And, as the Sunni-Shiite sectarian killings reached horrendous levels that year, the U.S. military assisted in the de facto ethnic cleansing of mixed neighborhoods by helping Sunnis and Shiites move into separate enclaves � protected by concrete barriers � thus making the targeting of ethnic enemies more difficult. In other words, the flames of sectarian violence were likely to have abated whether Bush ordered the �surge� or not.

Radical Shiite leader Moktada al-Sadr also helped by issuing a unilateral cease-fire, reportedly at the urging of his patrons in Iran who were interested in cooling down regional tensions and speeding up the U.S. withdrawal. By 2008, another factor in the declining violence was the growing awareness among Iraqis that the U.S. military�s occupation indeed was coming to an end. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was demanding a firm timetable for American withdrawal from Bush, who finally capitulated.

Woodward�s Analysis

Even author Bob Woodward, who had published best-sellers that praised Bush�s early war judgments, concluded that the �surge� was only one factor and possibly not even a major one in the declining violence.

In his book, The War Within, Woodward wrote, �In Washington, conventional wisdom translated these events into a simple view: The surge had worked. But the full story was more complicated. At least three other factors were as important as, or even more important than, the surge.�

Woodward, whose book drew heavily from Pentagon insiders, listed the Sunni rejection of al-Qaeda extremists in Anbar Province and the surprise decision of al-Sadr to order a cease-fire as two important factors. A third factor, which Woodward argued may have been the most significant, was the use of new highly classified U.S. intelligence tactics that allowed for rapid targeting and killing of insurgent leaders. In other words, key factors in the drop in violence had nothing to do with the �surge.�

And, beyond the dubious impact of the �surge� on the gradual reduction in violence, Bush�s escalation failed to achieve its other stated goals, particularly creating political space so the Sunni-Shiite divisions over issues like oil profits could be resolved. Despite the sacrifice of additional American and Iraqi blood, those compromises did not materialize.

Plus, if you�re wondering what the �surge� and its loosened rules of engagement meant for Iraqis, you should watch the WikiLeaks� �Collateral Murder� video, which depicts a scene during the �surge� when U.S. firepower mowed down a group of Iraqi men, including two Reuters journalists, as they walked down a street in Baghdad. The U.S. attack helicopters then killed a father and wounded his two children when the man stopped his van in an effort to take survivors to the hospital.

However, in 2008, the still-influential neocons saw an opportunity to rehabilitate their bloody reputations when the numbers of Iraq War casualties declined. The neocons credited themselves and the �successful surge� with the improvement.

As the neocons pushed this �successful surge� myth, they were aided by the mainstream news media, which also had promoted the ill-fated war and was looking for a way to bolster its standing with the public. Typical of this new conventional wisdom, Newsweek published a cover story on the �surge� under the title, �victory at last.� To say otherwise brought you harsh criticism for not giving credit to �the troops.�

The Myth�s Consequences

Thus, the myth grew that Bush�s �surge� had brought Iraqi violence under control and the United States to the brink of �victory.� Gen. David Petraeus, who took command of Iraq after Bush yanked Casey and Abizaid, was elevated into hero status as a military genius.

Also, Defense Secretary Robert Gates received the encomium of �wise man� for implementing the �surge� after Bush fired Donald Rumsfeld in November 2006 for standing behind his field generals and suggesting a faster U.S. troop drawdown in Iraq. (At the time, many Democrats, including then-Sen. Hillary Clinton, misinterpreted Rumsfeld�s dismissal and Gates�s hiring as a sign that Bush would wind down the war when it actually signaled his plan to escalate it.)

With the �successful surge� conventional wisdom firmly established in 2008, media stars pounded Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama for his heresy in doubting the �surge.� In major televised interviews, CBS News� Katie Couric and ABC News� George Stephanopoulos demanded that Obama admit he was wrong to oppose the �surge� and that his Republican rival, Sen. McCain, was right to support it.

For weeks, Obama held firm, insisting correctly that the issue was more complicated than his interviewers wanted to admit. He argued that there were many factors behind Iraq�s changed security environment. But ultimately he caved in while being interrogated on Sept. 4, 2008, by Fox News� Bill O�Reilly.

�I think that the surge has succeeded in ways that nobody anticipated,� Obama confessed to O�Reilly. �It�s succeeded beyond our wildest dreams.�

Obama apparently judged that continued resistance to this Washington �group think� was futile. Candidate Obama�s surrender on the �successful surge� myth also was the first sign of his tendency to cave in when faced with a misguided Washington consensus.

His capitulation had other long-term consequences. For one, it gave Gen. Petraeus and Defense Secretary Gates inflated reputations inside Official Washington and greater leverage in 2009 (along with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) to force President Obama into accepting a similar �surge� in Afghanistan, what some analysts view as Obama�s biggest national security blunder. [For details, see Robert Parry�s America�s Stolen Narrative.]

The Iraq War�s �surge� also did nothing to change the trajectory of what amounted to a major American national security failure. Perhaps the only real accomplishment of the �surge� was to let President Bush and Vice President Cheney enjoy a �decent interval� between their departure from government in early 2009 and the unceremonious U.S. departure from Iraq in late 2011. That �decent interval� was purchased with the lives of about 1,000 U.S. soldiers and countless thousands of Iraqis.

In the final accounting of the neocon adventure of conquering Iraq, nearly 4,500 American soldiers had died; some 30,000 were wounded; and an estimated $1 trillion was squandered. What was ultimately left behind was not only a devastated Iraqi nation but an authoritarian Shiite government (in place of Saddam Hussein�s authoritarian Sunni government) and an Iraq that had become a regional ally of Iran (rather than a bulwark against Iran).

The hard truth is that the bloody folly of the Iraq War was not �salvaged� by the �surge� � despite that preferred Washington narrative. As thrilling as it might be to think back on the heroic President Bush and the brave neocons bucking the anti-war pressures in 2007 and saving the day, the harsh reality is that another 1,000 U.S. soldiers and many more Iraqis were sent to their deaths in the cause of creating a politically useful myth.

38 comments

In Rare Consensus, Sunnis and Shiites Tell Cheney to Shut Up

Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=9160"><span class="small">Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker</span></a>

Friday, 20 June 2014 15:13

Borowitz writes: "In a development that offers a faint glimmer of hope for Iraq, both Sunnis and Shiites are finding common ground in the view that former Vice-President Dick Cheney seriously needs to shut up."

Former vice president Dick Cheney speaks about national security in Washington, 05/21/09. (photo: Reuters)

In Rare Consensus, Sunnis and Shiites Tell Cheney to Shut Up

By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker

20 June 14

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The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report."

n a development that offers a faint glimmer of hope for Iraq, both Sunnis and Shiites are finding common ground in the view that former Vice-President Dick Cheney seriously needs to shut up.

In the days following the publication, this week, of a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece about Iraq that Cheney wrote with his daughter Liz, hatred of the former Vice-President has, to the surprise of many, become the first thing that Sunnis and Shiites have agreed upon in centuries.

Iraqi observers in recent days have reported seeing both Sunnis and Shiites reading the Cheneys� op-ed then tearing it to shreds in a rage.

�Cheney is an ass!� a Sunni merchant reportedly exclaimed in a Baghdad market on Thursday, to the resounding cheers of several Shiites nearby.

�Historically, it�s been challenging to find anything that Sunnis and Shiites agree on,� said Sabah al-Alousi, a history professor at the University of Baghdad. �That�s why their apparent consensus that Dick Cheney needs to shut the hell up is so significant.�

Visiting Baghdad on Friday, Secretary of State John Kerry said that the joint Sunni-Shiite calls for Dick Cheney to shut his pie hole were a cause for optimism.

�If Dick Cheney winds up being the one thing that brings Sunnis and Shiites together, the United States owes him a debt of thanks,� he said, adding that the two sects� view of the former Vice-President was also shared by the Kurds.

46 comments

Obama Prepares for Drone War in Iraq

Friday, 20 June 2014 15:06

Cole writes: "President Barack Obama announced on Thursday that he will send 300 Green Beret Army special operations soldiers to Iraq."

Juan Cole. (photo: Informed Comment)

Obama Prepares for Drone War in Iraq

By Juan Cole, Informed Comment

20 June 14

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resident Barack Obama announced on Thursday that he will send 300 Green Beret Army special operations soldiers to Iraq. They will be detailed to Iraqi National Army Headquarters and brigade HQs and their primary task will apparently be intelligence-gathering and helping with the Iraqi National Army response to the advances of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS or ISIL). Likely the intelligence-gathering in turn is intended to allow the deployment in Iraq of American drones. At the moment, the US has no good intelligence on the basis of which to fly the drones.

Obama underlined that no combat troops will be sent to Iraq.

These steps are in part obviously a political response to the Republican War Chorus that has blamed him for doing nothing (they can�t any longer say �nothing�) about the Iraq crisis. To the extent the moves are political, they are frankly craven. Obama should just have said no. If he needed covert intelligence, that is what the CIA and the NSA are for. (By the way, if the NSA surveillance program was really doing its job, how come northern and western Iraq could take Washington by surprise by seceding from the country in favor of a would-be al-Qaeda affiliate? Maybe they should be paying less attention to guys in Texas selling dime bags and more to like, actual al-Qaeda?)

To the extent that Obama is likely paving the way to US drone strikes on ISIS in Iraq, he is mysteriously failing to take his own advice. He has already admitted that the Iraq crisis is political and not military, and said that there are no military solutions. The Sunni Iraqis of Mosul, Tikrit and other towns of the west and north of the country have risen up and thrown off the government and the army of Shiite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The uprising was coordinated with ISIS, but was made up of many groups and to some extent was the spontaneous act of townspeople. Droning some ISIS commanders to death isn�t going to change the situation in Mosul, a city of 2 million that is done out with the Maliki government.

For Obama to associate himself with an attempt to crush this uprising in favor the the highly sectarian ruling Da�wa Party (Shiite �Call� or �Mission�), which is allied with Iran is most unwise. If it had to be done, it should have been done as a covert operation and never spoken of publicly.

Ominously, the administration is even talking about a sort of aerial hot pursuit, of droning ISIS in Syria. Obama is not old enough to remember the ways that �advisers� in Vietnam turned into armies and hot pursuit into and bombing of Cambodia laid the ground for genocide. I am.

Meanwhile, the ISIS takeover of Sunni Iraq provoked comment from key players in the Middle East. Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal responded forcefully to al-Maliki�s charge that Saudi Arabia is behind ISIS and all the violence it is committing in Iraq, intimating that the real problem is the sectarian way al-Maliki is governing the country. (That is rich, given that few countries in the world are governed in a more sectarian way than Saudi Arabia). Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari criticized Saudi Arabia for not issuing a condemnation of the massacres committed by ISIS. Turkish PM Tayyip Erdogan warned against US air strikes that would kill large numbers of innocents. Muslim televangelist Yusuf al-Qaradawi of the Muslim Brotherhood, based in Qatar, defended the revolt of the Sunnis of northern and western Iraq. Usually al-Qaradawi condemns al-Qaeda. Iraqi Sunni speaker of the parliament, Usama Nujayfi, said that the aid being received by the Iraqi army should not be turned into a political football.

Likely that aid will eventually include drones. Obama says he believes the drone program produces few civilian casualties, but in Pakistan they appear to be 15% or so of deaths. Pictures in the Iraqi press of women and children droned to death are a propaganda bonanza for al-Qaeda.

In the end, of course, Obama is doing very little about a situation regarding which very little can, practically speaking, be done. And as Will Rogers would have said, that is what the American people elected him to do.

8 comments

FOCUS | Veterans and Zombies

Friday, 20 June 2014 11:35

Krugman writes: "The goings-on at Veterans Affairs shouldn't cause us to lose sight of a much bigger scandal: the almost surreal inefficiency and injustice of the American health care system as a whole."

Paul Krugman. (photo: NYT)

Veterans and Zombies

By Paul Krugman, The New York Times

20 June 14

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ou�ve surely heard about the scandal at the Department of Veterans Affairs. A number of veterans found themselves waiting a long time for care, some of them died before they were seen, and some of the agency�s employees falsified records to cover up the extent of the problem. It�s a real scandal; some heads have already rolled, but there�s surely more to clean up.

But the goings-on at Veterans Affairs shouldn�t cause us to lose sight of a much bigger scandal: the almost surreal inefficiency and injustice of the American health care system as a whole. And it�s important to understand that the Veterans Affairs scandal, while real, is being hyped out of proportion by people whose real goal is to block reform of the larger system.

The essential, undeniable fact about American health care is how incredibly expensive it is � twice as costly per capita as the French system, two-and-a-half times as expensive as the British system. You might expect all that money to buy results, but the United States actually ranks low on basic measures of performance; we have low life expectancy and high infant mortality, and despite all that spending many people can�t get health care when they need it. What�s more, Americans seem to realize that they�re getting a bad deal: Surveys show a much smaller percentage of the population satisfied with the health system in America than in other countries.

50 comments

Prosecutors Allege Scott Walker at Center of 'Criminal Scheme'

Friday, 20 June 2014 10:12

Excerpt: "Prosecutors allege Gov. Scott Walker was at the center of an effort to illegally coordinate fundraising among conservative groups to help his campaign and those of Republican state senators facing recall elections during 2011 and 2012."

Wisconsin governor Scott Walker. (photo: Madison Times)

Prosecutors Allege Scott Walker at Center of 'Criminal Scheme'

By Patrick Marley, Daniel Bice and Bill Glauber, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

20 June 14

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adison � Prosecutors allege Gov. Scott Walker was at the center of an effort to illegally coordinate fundraising among conservative groups to help his campaign and those of Republican state senators facing recall elections during 2011 and 2012, according to documents unsealed Thursday.

In the documents, prosecutors laid out what they call an extensive "criminal scheme" to bypass state election laws by Walker, his campaign and two top Republican political operatives � R.J. Johnson and Deborah Jordahl. No one has been charged, but this marks the prosecutors' most detailed account of the investigation yet.

The governor and his close confidants helped raise money and control spending through 12 conservative groups during the recall election campaigns, according to the prosecutors' filings.

Update: Walker, on Fox News, says John Doe probe has 'been resolved'

Update: Walker campaign pays $245,000 to air TV ad for next 12 days

The documents include an excerpt from an email in which Walker tells Karl Rove, former top adviser to President George W. Bush, that Johnson would lead the coordination campaign. Johnson also is Walker's longtime campaign strategist and the chief adviser to Wisconsin Club for Growth, a prominent conservative group.

"Bottom-line: R.J. helps keep in place a team that is wildly successful in Wisconsin. We are running 9 recall elections and it will be like 9 congressional markets in every market in the state (and Twin Cities)," Walker wrote to Rove on May 4, 2011. Rove runs American Crossroads, which backs Republican congressional and presidential candidates.

Beginning in March 2011, there were "open and express discussions" of the need to coordinate the activities of entities like Americans for Prosperity, Wisconsin Club for Growth, the Republican Party of Wisconsin, the Republican State Leadership Committee and the Republican Governors Association, special prosecutor Francis Schmitz wrote. Conference calls were held between the Walker campaign, the governors association and the business lobbying group Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, he wrote.

The scope of the criminal scheme under investigation "is expansive," Schmitz wrote. "It includes criminal violations of multiple elections laws, including violations of Filing a False Campaign Report or Statement and Conspiracy to File a False Campaign Report or Statement."

Walker, who is running for re-election and is considered a possible 2016 presidential candidate, responded Thursday by criticizing the case that prosecutors were trying to build.

"You've got two judges, both a state judge and a federal judge, who said that they didn't buy into the argument that has been presented at this point," Walker said, speaking to reporters after presenting awards at the Water Council's summit in Milwaukee. "I think their words speak pretty strongly both at the federal and state level."

Walker said he hadn't seen the material and couldn't comment directly on his email to Rove. Walker indicated Johnson, his chief strategist, will remain with the campaign for the fall election.

"We've used him in the past," Walker said. "I don't see that changing in the future."

Later Thursday, Walker released a statement attacking Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm. "The accusation of any wrongdoing written in the complaint by the office of a partisan Democrat district attorney by me or by my campaign is categorically false," he said in the statement.

The statement continued: "This is nothing more than a partisan investigation with no basis in state law. It's time for the prosecutors to acknowledge both judges' orders to end this investigation. Now my Democratic opponents will use these false accusations to distract from the issues important to the voters of Wisconsin."

'Witch hunt'

Federal Appeals Judge Frank Easterbrook unsealed the court documents Thursday as he reviews a lawsuit attempting to end the John Doe probe. Two unnamed individuals this week tried to intervene in the case to prevent the release of the records, but Easterbrook rebuffed their request.

Also Thursday, another federal judge ruled a host of other documents would mostly remain secret, though he allowed some could become public later.

The lawsuit was brought by Wisconsin Club for Growth and one of its directors, Eric O'Keefe. They allege the probe has violated their First Amendment rights to free expression. U.S. District Judge Rudolph Randa ruled last month to halt the investigation for now.

Wisconsin Club for Growth has alleged Chisholm and other prosecutors are on a "witch hunt" against conservatives, and a lawyer for the organization contended other documents released Thursday provided evidence of that.

"The materials released today are all ones that we asked the district court to unseal because the public has a right to know about the John Doe prosecutors' abuse of government power," club attorney Andrew Grossman said in a written statement.

Among the documents made public in their entirety is O'Keefe's original complaint asking Randa to halt the investigation.

The complaint says former Kenosha County Circuit Judge Barbara Kluka, the judge who originally presided over the investigation, authorized as many as 100 subpoenas "of breathtaking scope" and ordered raids "related to at least 29 organizations."

O'Keefe's complaint also describes the early-morning raids at the homes of several targets on Oct. 3, 2013.

"School-age children were home in at least two residences and school buses passed their houses during the course of the raids, which lasted over two and a half hours," O'Keefe's complaint said. "The searches were conducted by six armed sheriff's deputies with flak vests, bright lights were aimed at the houses, and multiple vehicles were parked on the lots, police lights ablaze."

The complaint says investigators took all family members' computers and cellphones, and that no one was permitted to call their attorneys.

In the suit, O'Keefe claimed prosecutors, either directly or indirectly, supplied information to Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Daniel Bice for two articles � a 2010 story that broke for the first time an earlier John Doe probe; and an Oct. 21, 2013, article that revealed a second John Doe investigation had been launched.

O'Keefe charged "information from the article was leaked directly or indirectly from the DA's Office with the purpose of influencing the 2014 campaign cycle and legislative session and chilling conservative activism."

Leaks by John Doe prosecutors would violate the secrecy order imposed in such cases.

The Journal Sentinel has denied the accusation.

"Neither the tips nor the information in Dan's columns came from the Milwaukee County District Attorney's Office or from any prosecutor in the case," Martin Kaiser, editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, said Thursday.

Coordination alleged

Prosecutors allege Johnson and Jordahl acted as a "hub" to coordinate activities among Walker's campaign and a host of conservative groups to help Walker and other Republicans in the recall elections. Those recalls were sparked by the GOP move in 2011 to sharply limit collective bargaining for most public employees.

Outside groups are allowed to work together on campaign activity, but there are limits on their ability to work with candidates. Generally, they are supposed to remain independent and not allowed to strategize with candidates.

Wisconsin Club for Growth maintains that prohibition does not apply to them and other conservative groups because they did not run ads explicitly telling people how to vote. Their efforts praised Walker and criticized his Democratic opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, but did not use the phrases "vote for" or "vote against," they argue.

Randa and the second state judge overseeing the probe, state Reserve Judge Gregory Peterson, have sided with conservatives on that point. Prosecutors are seeking to overturn those rulings in state and federal court.

The prosecutors say the work amounts to illegal campaign contributions. They contend Wisconsin Club for Growth doled out money to other groups, who then used it to help Walker or other Republicans.

For example, the organization gave $2.5 million to Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, which in turn placed ads supporting Walker and Republicans, and criticizing their foes.

The club gave $4.6 million to Citizens for a Strong America � a sum that represented 99.9% of its revenue. The group then passed on some of the money to other groups � $1.2 million to Wisconsin Family Action, nearly $350,000 to Wisconsin Right to Life, and $245,000 to United Sportsmen of Wisconsin. In addition, Schmitz alleged, Citizens for a Strong America was the creation of Jordahl and Johnson. Johnson's wife, Valerie, was the treasurer and a signatory on the bank account, the brief alleges.

Johnson directly controlled Wisconsin Club for Growth, and Jordahl was a signatory on the club's bank account, the brief states.

"We own CFG," Johnson has stated, according to prosecutors.

Prosecutors say Walker raised money for both his campaign and the club. Keith Gilkes � Walker's chief of staff in 2011 and campaign manager in 2010 and 2012 � also raised money for both Walker's campaign and the club, the documents allege. Similarly, GOP fundraisers Mary Stitt, Kelly Rindfleisch and Kate Doner also raised money for both Walker's campaign and the club, according to prosecutors.

As part of the earlier John Doe probe, Rindfleisch was convicted in 2012 for doing campaign work on government time while she served as Walker's deputy chief of staff when he was county executive. She is now caught up in the investigation into campaign coordination.

Based on the prosecutors' arguments, Kluka authorized sweeping subpoenas for a number of individuals, including O'Keefe. O'Keefe was ordered to turn over scores of documents dating back to 2009, the new documents show.

But Peterson, who replaced Kluka on the second John Doe case, quashed the subpoenas in January and ordered the return of any property seized because he found there was no probable cause shown that they violated campaign finance laws.

"I am persuaded the statutes only prohibit coordination by candidates and independent organizations for a political purpose, and political purpose, with one minor exception not relevant here ... requires express advocacy," Peterson wrote in an order included in documents released Thursday. "There is no evidence of express advocacy."

Unlike typical cases, large sections of documents in the club's lawsuit have been blacked out because the underlying investigation was supposed to be secret. Media groups have intervened to try to unseal the entire case file, but unnamed targets have asked to keep it closed.

In an order Thursday, Randa declined to make public any records, saying secrecy was important to protect people and entities who have not been charged.

He gave prosecutors, the club and the unnamed people two weeks to recommend what records they each believed could be made public.

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