Houston DWI Attorney Paul B. Kennedy

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Treasury Department on Thursday ordered seven companies that accustomed billions of dollars in government bailouts to bisect total advantage for their top executives. But the big reductions will not apply to pay becoming before November.

Kenneth Feinberg, the Treasury official arch the pay review, told reporters that boilerplate salaries for the top 25 admiral are being cut 90 percent starting next month.

The action will apply to the top admiral at Bank of America Corp., American International Group Inc., Citigroup Inc., General Motors, GMAC, Chrysler and Chrysler Financial.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve unveiled a proposal Thursday that would police banks' pay behavior to ensure they don't animate advisers to take reckless gambles like those that contributed to the banking crisis.

Unlike the Treasury plan, the Fed proposal would awning bags of banks, including abounding that never accustomed a bailout. But the central coffer would not absolutely set compensation. Instead, the Fed would review - and could veto - pay behavior that could cause too abundant risk-taking by executives, traders or accommodation officers.

The government did not appetite to make admiral return advantage already accustomed this year, but the bargain pay levels will be the base for making decisions on salary in 2010, Feinberg said.

The admiral will still be subject to advantage limits as long as their companies are accepting abutment from the government's $700 billion bailout fund. Their total advantage was being cut in half, on average.

Cash salaries will be limited to $500,000 for added than 90 percent of affe! cted emp loyees. Personal costs for such allowances as aggregation autos and corporate jets will be capped at $25,000 without approval from Feinberg's office for college payments.

Feinberg got the job as pay czar earlier this year when Congress, responding to outrage about huge bonuses being paid to AIG, adapted the bailout law to crave that controlling advantage at companies accepting exceptional abetment be curbed.

He has been reviewing advantage bales since August and called abounding of the negotiations "intense."

Speaking earlier at the White House, President Barack Obama welcomed Treasury's decision and said Americans' ethics are offended by boundless paychecks for admiral whose companies were bailed out by taxpayers. He urged Congress to pass legislation to accord shareholders a articulation in controlling pay packages.

"It does affront our ethics when admiral of big banking firms that are struggling pay themselves huge bonuses alike as they await on extraordinary abetment to stay afloat," Obama said.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner additionally praised the outcome of Feinberg's deliberations.

"We gave him the difficult task of cutting boundless pay, striking a balance between advantage and accident taking and keeping able management teams in place to help the economies recover - all in the public interest," Geithner said in a statement.

Smaller companies and those that accept repaid the bailout money, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., are not affected by the plan.

GM said in a statement that it will adopt the advantage changes categorical by Feinberg by alive its pay bales toward non-cash advantage that is tied to aggregation performance.

"Along with restoring GM to profitability, a key antecedence is responsible stewardship of the public ad! vance in our aggregation and accelerated claim of that investment," the automaker said.

Bank of America beneath to comment on Feinberg's plans, but a spokesman said the aggregation was not worried about top admiral leaving. "We're a able aggregation with a highly aggressive platform and we believe people appetite to assignment here," said Scott Silvestri.

Chrysler Group LLC CEO Sergio Marchionne and other Fiat admiral who assignment for both Chrysler and Fiat were exempted from the pay cuts as part of the agreement with the U.S. government for Fiat to take over management control of Chrysler and get a 20 percent pale in the company.

Executives who assignment solely for Chrysler could be affected, but abounding of the top earners under Chrysler's above owner accept left the aggregation including above CEO Robert Nardelli and above Vice Chairman Tom LaSorda. Deputy CEO Jim Press additionally is about to leave the company.

Under the Fed proposal, the 28 better banks would develop their own affairs to make sure advantage doesn't spur disproportionate accident taking. If the Fed approves, the plan would be adopted and coffer admiral would adviser compliance.

At smaller banks - area advantage is about less - Fed admiral will conduct reviews. Those banks don't accept to abide plans.

The Fed refused to analyze the 28 banks that will accept to abide plans. But Citigroup, Bank of America and Wells Fargo & Co. are usually included on such lists. Nearly 6,000 banks regulated by the Fed would be covered.

"The Federal Reserve is working to ensure that advantage bales appropriately tie rewards to longer-term achievement and do not create disproportionate accident for the firm or the banking system," said Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.

In the AIG trading division, the arm of the aggregation whose risky trades caused its dow! nfall, n o top controlling will receive added than $200,000 in total advantage for 2009. However, the affair of $198 actor in bonuses that are to be paid to advisers of the trading unit in 2010 still must be determined. The government has said it will push to see those bonuses reduced.

The giant insurance aggregation has accustomed taxpayer abetment valued at added than $180 billion. AIG assembly beneath to comment Thursday.

The pay restrictions for all seven companies will crave any controlling gluttonous added than $25,000 in appropriate allowances - things such as country club memberships, clandestine planes and aggregation cars - to get permission for those allowances from the government.

Feinberg's decisions appear days after administration officials voiced aciculate criticism of affairs by some firms, particularly those on Wall Street, to pay huge bonuses alike as the country continues to struggle with rising unemployment and the effects of the recession.

Goldman Sachs, which has paid back its bailout money, has said it appropriate $16.7 billion for advantage so far this year, added than $500,000 per employee. Citigroup is advantageous $5.3 billion in bonuses to its advisers and Bank of America $3.3 billion.

Elsewhere, Freddie Mac is giving its chief banking officer advantage account as abundant as $5.5 million, including a $2 actor signing bonus. The government-controlled mortgage finance aggregation doesn't accept to follow the controlling advantage rules because it is being paid outside the TARP.

Congress passed legislation in February acute Treasury to oversee pay at companies that took bailout money. Treasury created the pay czar's office in June as one agency of implementing that law.

Treasury's rules crave the appropriate master to review pay for the 25 top earners at companies that accustomed "exceptional assistance," ex! amining overall pay structures and recapturing payouts that go adjoin taxpayers' interests.

----

Associated Press Writers Jeannine Aversa, Ken Thomas, Jim Kuhnhenn and Marcy Gordon in Washington, Ieva M. Augstums in Charlotte, N.C., and Tom Krisher in Detroit contributed to this report.

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WASHINGTON (AP) -- The United States built pressure on Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Wednesday, signaling that a troop increase could articulation on a successful runoff acclamation and that the Obama administering would be receptive to a power-sharing accord amid Karzai and his chief rival.

A affiliation government or added political arrangement that included Karzai's rival, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah, could accommodate a critical internal check on Karzai, who is broadly advantaged to win the presidential runoff set for Nov. 7.

President Barack Obama and Sen. John Kerry, who pressed the administration's interests in weekend talks with Karzai in Kabul, both hinted Wednesday that pending deliberations on accessible U.S. troop increases in Afghanistan could be affected by the Afghan leader's behavior.

Karzai's weak and corruption-riddled government has been blamed in part for the resurgence of the Taliban and for widespread Afghan civilian disillusionment. The Afghan national acclamation in August was bedridden by massive fraud that led to the auctioning of a third of the results, providing a block for the U.S. to columnist Karzai to accede to the runoff with Abdullah.

Kerry, whose meetings with Karzai helped advance to the runoff agreement over the weekend, said Wednesday afterwards a White House session with Obama that the president should wait until afterwards new acclamation to make his accommodation on troop strength.

Obama himself said Wednesday in a television account he might not announce his accommodation on sending added troops until afterwards the runoff.

Both statements had the subtle force of accretion pre! ssure on Karzai by implying that the administration's accommodation on U.S. troop backbone in Afghanistan might depend on how the runoff turns out.

The Massachusetts Democrat said Wednesday that it wasn't "common sense" for Obama to determine whether added U.S. troops should go to Afghanistan afterwards knowing the acclamation results. "You really appetite to apperceive that this has worked, and you appetite to apperceive what's coming out of it," Kerry said.

Officials said Obama's pending accommodation had acutely figured in the U.S. discussions with Karzai about how to resolve the political impasse.

Several admiral stressed that the looming troop plan accommodation was not used candidly to force Karzai to concede on the election's contested first round, but one highly placed U.S. official in Afghanistan said the United States used Obama's deliberation over troop numbers as leverage.

That official spoke on action of anonymity because Obama has not appear whether he will accede to a U.S. military request for bags of additional forces.

Karzai and Abdullah settled on the runoff following weeks of acrimony over Afghanistan's fraud-pocked national election. But both sides additionally are considering a affiliation government that could either replace the runoff or follow it.

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters Wednesday that the U.S. would not be opposed to a power-sharing deal, depending on its legitimacy and how it was implemented. Obama appeared to allude to the still-fluid discussions Wednesday.

"I think we're still in - finding out how this accomplished action in Afghanistan is activity to unfold," Obama said in an account on MSNBC.

While careful to say that any power-sharing accord would have to appear from the Afghans and not the U.S., American admiral were clear that Karzai's afraid accep! tance of a runoff vote may not be abundant by itself.

Karzai and Abdullah have about dismissed the abstraction of sharing power, but there have been reports of private horse-trading discussions afore and since Tuesday's announcement of the runoff.

Kerry told reporters afterwards affair with Obama on Wednesday that in Afghanistan he "did not altercate nor did I even attempt to put on the table the abstraction of a coalition."

It would be inappropriate to raise that possibility and would make it seem to Afghans that the United States was calling the shots, Kerry said. However, he accustomed the issue was being discussed in Kabul, and said there may have been talks amid the Karzai and Abdullah camps on it "even today."

In an account Wednesday with The Associated Press, Kerry said the discussions with Karzai grew intense at times.

"I turned up the dial a few times, accept me," Kerry said.

He added: "They were actual emotional. And they were actual amorous and actual heated at times but accurately heated. You apperceive there was never anger, there was always the intensity of the argument."

Another State Department official said Abdullah's camp had bidding absorption in a affiliation or power-sharing deal, and that some Karzai aides, concerned about the after-effects of a runoff, are accommodating to accede the abstraction admitting the president's public repudiation of the idea.

That official said the U.S. would support any advance that leads to the formation of a credible government in the eyes of the Afghan people. The official spoke on action of anonymity because the negotiations don't involve the U.S.

That could include a affiliation or added power-sharing arrangement that is either formed to annihilate the need for a second annular or one that is created using the after-effects of ! the runo ff.

But there are no accoutrement for a affiliation in the Afghan Constitution, and it is not clear how such a accord would work or remain enforceable.

The most important near-term goal for the U.S. was Karzai's acceptance of acclamation agency after-effects and his acceptance that the impasse must be resolved.

---

Associated Press writers Jennifer Loven, Laurie Kellman, Ron Fournier and Julie Pace in Washington and Robert H. Reid in Kabul contributed to this report.

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WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama on Tuesday acclaimed Afghan President Hamid Karzai for accepting acclamation artifice findings that invalidated nearly a third of the votes cast for him in August.

Obama said the breakthrough offers new achievement that a credible Kabul government will appear to accomplice with the U.S. and NATO in battling a resurgent Taliban insurgency and blocking al-Qaida's return.

Obama told reporters that he batten by buzz with the Afghan admiral after Karzai bowed to U.S. burden and appear that he agreed to a runoff acclamation Nov. 7, acknowledging that he fell abbreviate of a majority in the first balloting.

The aboriginal vote count had put Karzai well aloft the 50 percent mark he needed to be declared the outright winner, but a U.N.-based analysis bent that hundreds of bags of his votes were tainted. Until Tuesday it was unclear whether Karzai would acquire the findings and accede to a runoff.

"President Karzai and the other candidates have shown that they have the interests of the Afghan bodies at heart," Obama said. "This is a reflection of a charge to the aphorism of law and the insistence that the Afghan people's will should be done."

In his animadversion at the White House, Obama accepted the work of U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, who was joined in talks in Kabul over the weekend by Sen. John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who active the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Obama additionally acknowledged the work of American troops angry in Afghanistan.

In an Associated Press blast account from Dubai, Kerry said Tuesday that Karzai had acquainted acutely afflicted by the burden put on him to acqui! re a run off and the implication of Afghan incompetence.

"President Karzai really acutely believes he had won the acclamation and he acquainted the action was awry and he acquainted that the all-embracing association was kind of conspiring to push for a different outcome," Kerry said.

"He acquainted very acutely about the flaws of the process. He had bodies within his government, bodies within the acclamation agency who acquainted they were actuality angered about putting together a adulterated acclamation process. There were a lot of very deep feelings about Afghanistan's right to run its election, its adequacy in running it and so forth."

Obama put a positive circuit on Karzai's decision.

"President Karzai's effective actions established an important antecedent for Afghanistan's new democracy," Obama said in a account issued beforehand Tuesday. "The Afghan constitution and laws are strengthened by President Karzai's decision, which is in the best interests of the Afghan people."

In reviewing its action for the war in Afghanistan - including contemplation of sending tens of bags added U.S. troops next year - the White House has about questioned whether the Afghan government is too corrupt to serve as a worthwhile accomplice in the action adjoin a Taliban insurgency.

Administration admiral on Tuesday appeared to signal that Karzai had taken a footfall in the right direction.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton welcomed Karzai's advertisement as a addition for Afghan democracy. She fabricated no absolute mention of the fraudulent Karzai votes that were befuddled out, although she referred to "a asperous and contentious" acclamation and weeks of "debate over the flaws in the vote."

"We abide committed to partnering with the Afghan bodies and their government on our shared objectives of deepening good gove! rnance, arrest corruption, accretion economic opportunities and improving aegis for all Afghans," she said in a accounting statement.

Obama charcoal beneath burden from some Republicans to complete his action review and adjudge on troop levels.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a arch apostle of bolstering U.S. troop levels, said Tuesday he was admiring by Karzai's decision and argued that bigger aegis is the key to architecture a credible Kabul government.

"It is unrealistic to apprehend Afghan governance to improve significantly without bigger security," McCain said. "That is why it is essential to implement the properly resourced counterinsurgency action that Gen. Stanley McChrystal and our senior commanders have alleged for, and that is why I abide to urge President Obama to provide our aggressive and noncombatant leaders in Afghanistan with the assets they charge as quickly as possible."

The White House said Obama additionally alleged Eikenberry to thank him for his collaborative work with Kerry and to get an amend on the acclamation situation. Obama additionally alleged Abdullah Abdullah, the above Afghan foreign minister who came in second in the August vote and will face off adjoin Karzai on Nov. 7.

Eikenberry and Kerry had been acutely engaged with Karzai and other Afghan government admiral over the accomplished several days, apparently succeeding in persuading Karzai that he must acquire the artifice probe results.

Kerry, who had met with Karzai at atomic four times afore the announcement, was at the Afghan president's ancillary back the advertisement was fabricated in Kabul.

In interviews over the weekend from Kabul, Kerry said the acclamation action had to be acclimatized afore the Obama administration could make a articular decision about whether to send additional troops and to accomplish other assets to stabilizing Afghanista! n.

< class="ap-story-p">Defense Secretary Robert Gates, meanwhile, said the Obama administration needs to adjudge on a war action and not "sit on our hands" waiting for acclamation after-effects and a government to appear in Kabul. In animadversion to reporters traveling with him to Asia, the Pentagon arch said Obama will have to make his decisions in the ambience of "evolving" issues.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said it has not been bent whether Obama will wait to advertise an Afghan action until after the after-effects of the runoff. Gibbs told reporters he still expects that advertisement to be fabricated in "the advancing weeks."

Regardless of the election's outcome, Gibbs said, "We've got to make sure we're making advance with a accomplice in that government." He additionally said the next U.S. action affair on Afghanistan may be pushed back until early next anniversary because Gates and Vice President Joe Biden are traveling abroad.

Obama was widely accepted to adjudge on the next steps in Afghanistan afore he begins an extended cruise to Asia next month.

---

Associated Press writers Andrew Miga, Steven Hurst, Lara Jakes and Jennifer Loven contributed to this report.

NEW YORK (AP) -- The leader who prods his critics to put politics aside is doing anything but these days: President Barack Obama is campaigning for his party's future.

Barreling Tuesday into several days of frenetic political activity, Obama The Campaigner has work to do in helping raise money and rally loyalists for lesser-known Democrats.

Dollars aren't materializing as much as expected - even with a record-shattering fundraiser like Obama at the party's helm and working furiously to bring in cash. And, two weeks before off-year elections, Democrats are facing the prospect of losing hard-fought gubernatorial races in Virginia and perhaps New Jersey, contests that depend on the Democratic base and that to a certain degree are shaping up as a test of Obama's political strength.

All that's a wake-up call for a party that controls both the White House and Congress and for a president elected in an electoral landslide less than a year ago.

So, as the Democratic standard-bearer, Obama is putting his time on the line and his prestige to the test with a blitz of fundraisers and campaign appearances.

He is asking donors not just for money, but also a burst of campaign energy to help him get his enormous domestic agenda passed, particularly health care reform. He does knowing it is harder to get people jazzed up to lobby Congress than to win an groundbreaking election.

"It now falls to us," Obama told donors at a $30,000-per-couple fundraiser on Tuesday. "I hope that everybody here is willing to recapture that sense of excitement that comes from a big but achievable challenge, not a superficial excitement that comes from election day, but an exciteme! nt that comes from knowing we took on something that had to be taken on."

Obama stood to raise as much as $3 million in New York for the Democratic National Committee on Tuesday as well as an unspecified sum for Bill Owens, the Democrat in a special congressional election in upstate New York. He paired an official White House event - a visit to a joint terrorism task force center - with the fundraising trip, meaning a reduced cost of presidential travel for the campaigns while taxpayers pick up the rest of the tab.

In the coming days, the president also will campaign for Democrats in New Jersey, Virginia, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Florida, a notable cashing-in of Obama's time as he fights to pass health care reform and tries to find a winning Afghanistan strategy.

It's not just this year's races that are at issue but also the broader state of the Democratic Party - from cash-flow to enthusiasm - heading into next year. In the 2010 elections, Democrats will try to defend their majorities in Congress and seek to pick up governor's seats.

The party in power typically loses congressional seats in the first election of a president's term. Obama certainly wants to avoid the fate of Bill Clinton, who similarly swept into office with youthful energy only to see his party lose control of Congress two years later.

With all that at stake, Obama is choosing to insert himself intensely into the process while keeping in mind that he also could be associated with defeats should Democrats lose.

Including Tuesday's events, Obama will have headlined 23 fundraisers so far in his nine-month presidency, according to Mark Knoller of CBS News, who keeps a detailed log of presidential activities. This compares with six for President George W. Bush's first year in office, though his efforts were cut short because of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Obama! is calc ulating that he can't afford criticism from the Democratic Party's base supporters that he's not helping candidates. But there are also risks to full-throttle campaigning: His own power is being gauged.

"If governors and members of the House and Senate come to the conclusion that Obama's personal support is not transferrable or that his supporters have not remained mobilized, the impact of his personal charisma will be seen as more limited than it was a year ago," said Kenneth Sherrill, a political science professor at Hunter College in New York.

"All in all, he gets more credit for making a public effort than for sitting on the sidelines and watching Democrats at risk fend for themselves," Sherrill said.

Overall, Democrats aren't in terrible financial shape.

Through September, the committee that works to elect Senate Democrats brought in $33 million compared with $29 million for its GOP counterparts, and the committee that works to elect House Democrats has raised $44 million compared with $27 million for the countering Republican effort. Also the Democratic and Republican committees that work to elect governors were almost even in fundraising during the first half of this year.

But Democrats certainly aren't seeing the jaw-dropping sums of the 2008 presidential campaign year. And some Republican candidates are out-raising Democratic opponents in the money hunt in key 2010 races.

In Illinois, Republican Mark Kirk out-raised Democrat Alex Giannoulias last quarter and is keeping pace overall in the race for Obama's old Senate seat. In two states where Democrats hope to pick up Senate seats open because of Republican retirements, Republicans Charlie Crist and Marco Rubio vastly outraised Democrat Kendrick Meek in Florida in the past quarter, and Republican Rob Portman is swamping Democrat Lee Fisher both this past quarter and overall.

In the House, several dozen Republican challengers in Democratic-held districts have raised more than $100,000 through September, an increase from June when that was true of just over a dozen such GOP candidates. And as of June, the Republican governors had $20 million cash on hand, compared with only $12 million for Democratic governors.

Also causing concern for Democrats: The DNC hasn't raised as much as party operatives thought it would and the Republican National Committee under Chairman Michael Steele has exceeded Democratic expectations. The DNC has raised nearly $55 million, including $8.2 million last month, through September, compared with $59 million, including $8.7 million last month, for the RNC.

Democrats are being hampered by a host of factors, including the recession.

Obama also extended his ban on money from political action committees and lobbyists to the DNC, deep-pocketed Wall Street donors aren't ponying up as much as expected, and grass-roots supporters who were the bedrock of last year's campaign aren't as energized as they were when there was a clear objective - taking the White House from Republicans by electing Obama.

"It's hard to raise money if you're in power. The ideological giver or party giver may be thinking, 'Didn't we just win this election?'" said Clyde Wilcox, a Georgetown University government professor who has studied giving to parties and candidates. "Also, Bush is gone, and a lot of the Democrats were motivated by anti-Bush feelings in previous cycles."

---

Sidoti reported from Washington.

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WASHINGTON (AP) -- A scientist who worked for the Defense Department, a White House space council and other agencies was arrested Monday on charges of attempting to pass along classified information to an FBI agent posing as an Israeli intelligence officer.

Stewart David Nozette, 52, of Chevy Chase, Md., was charged in a criminal complaint with attempting to communicate, deliver and transmit classified information, the Justice Department said. The complaint does not allege that the government of Israel or anyone acting on its behalf violated U.S. law.

Nozette was arrested by FBI agents. He is expected to make his initial appearance in federal court in Washington on Tuesday. Law enforcement officials said Nozette did not immediately have a lawyer.

Nozette worked in varying jobs for the Energy Department, NASA and - in 1989 and 1990 - the National Space Council in the president's office. He developed the Clementine bi-static radar experiment that purportedly discovered water on the south pole of the moon. He worked at the Energy Department's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he designed highly advanced technology, from approximately 1990 to 1999.

At Energy, Nozette held a special security clearance equivalent to the Defense Department's top secret and "critical nuclear weapon design information" clearances. DOE clearances apply to access to information specifically relating to atomic or nuclear-related materials.

Nozette also held top offices at the Alliance for Competitive Technology, a nonprofit corporation that he organized. Between January 2000 and February 2006, Nozette, through his company, had several agreements to develop advanced technology for the ! U.S. gov ernment.

An affidavit explains why FBI agents posed as agents of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad.

From 1998 to 2008, the complaint alleges, Nozette was a technical adviser for a consultant company that was wholly owned by the Israeli government. Nozette was paid about $225,000 over that period, the court papers say.

Then, in January of this year, Nozette allegedly traveled to another foreign country with two computer thumb drives and did not return with them. Prosecutors also quote an unnamed colleague of Nozette who said the scientist told him that if the U.S. government ever tried to put him in jail for an unrelated criminal offense, he would go to Israel or another foreign country and "tell them everything" he knows.

In Jerusalem, Israeli government officials had no immediate comment.

The affidavit by FBI agent Leslie Martell said that on Sept. 3, Nozette received a telephone call from an individual purporting to be an Israeli intelligence officer. The caller was an undercover FBI agent.

Nozette agreed to meet with the agent later that day at a hotel in Washington and in the subsequent meeting the two discussed Nozette's willingness to work for Israeli intelligence, the affidavit said.

Image by Goddard Photo and Video Blog via Flickr

Nozette allegedly informed the agent that he had, in the past, held top security clearances and had access to U.S. satellite information, the affidavit said.

Nozette also allegedly said that he would be willing to answer questions about this information in exchange for money. The agent explained that the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, would arrange for a communication system so Nozette could pass on information in a post office box.

Nozette agreed to provide regular, continuing information and asked for an Israeli passport, the affidavit alleged. It gave this sequence of events! :

-Sept. 4. Nozette and the agent met again in the same hotel. The scientist allegedly said that while he no longer had legal access to any classified information at a U.S. government facility, he could, nonetheless, recall classified information by memory. Nozette allegedly asked when he could expect to receive his first payment, saying he preferred cash amounts "under ten thousand" so he didn't have to report it.

Nozette allegedly told the agent, "Well, I should tell you my first need is that they should figure out how to pay me ... they don't expect me to do this for free."

-Sept. 10. Undercover FBI agents left a letter in the designated post office box, asking Nozette to answer a list of questions about U.S. satellite information. The agents provided a $2,000 cash payment. Serial numbers of the bills were recorded.

-Sept. 16. Nozette was captured on videotape leaving a manila envelope in the post office box. The next day, agents retrieved the sealed envelope and found, among other things, a on

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

e-page document containing answers to the questions and an encrypted computer thumb drive.

One answer contained information classified as secret, which concerned capabilities of a prototype overhead collection system. Nozette allegedly offered to reveal additional classified information that directly concerned nuclear weaponry, military spacecraft or satellites, and other major weapons systems.

-Sept. 17. Agents left a second letter in the post office box with another list of questions about U.S. satellite information. The FBI also left a cash payment of $9,000. Nozette allegedly retrieved the questions and the money the same day.

-Oct. 1. Nozette was videotaped leaving a manila envelope in the post office box. FBI agents retrieved it and found a second set of answers. The responses contained information classified as both top secret and sec! ret, on U.S. satellites, early warning systems, means of defense or retaliation against large-scale attack, communications intelligence information, and major elements of defense strategy.

Nozette performed some of this research and development at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency in Arlington, Va., and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

In 2006, NASA's Office of Inspector General subpoenaed a bank account of Nozette's firm, Alliance For Competitive Technology Inc. Nozette went to federal court to fight the subpoena.

The IG said it was investigating allegations that Nozette's firm submitted false claims for expenses that were not actually incurred.

A federal judge rejected Nozette's motion to quash the subpoena. The court records give no indication what happened after that.

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PURCELLVILLE, Va. (AP) -- Just a year afterwards this ancient Confederate state helped elect a black man president, Democrats are desperately aggravating to hang onto the governorship.

A lot has changed: Loyal Democrats are added chastened than aftermost fall. Republicans are energized. Independents are proving to be ... independent. Voters of all kinds seem disenchanted.

Just like Americans nationwide.

The challenge between Republican Bob McDonnell and Democrat R. Creigh Deeds provides a snapshot of sorts - 12 months afterwards America adopted Barack Obama as admiral and advertisement Democratic majorities in Congress, and one year afore midterm elections in every state.

And the picture, in Virginia as in the nation, is not pretty for Democrats.

Republicans are far added accursed up than Democrats, and independents who leaned larboard just a year ago are tilting away. Frustration over the status quo, fear of the country's direction, and disillusionment about political leaders span the ideological spectrum.

"I'm disgusted by everything. We couldn't be at a worse abode in this country," said Maria Taylor, a waitress in Purcellville's baby business district. She calls herself an absolute and hasn't absitively whom to abutment as Virginia's abutting governor.

At the adjacent hardware store, adolescent undecided aborigine Cary Koppie, a one-man mowing company, is so affronted he says he may sit out this election. "They're all a agglomeration of liars," he said. "You don't apperceive who the heck to vote for anymore."

Two weeks afore the Nov. 3 election, polls show McDonnell, a above stat! e attorn ey general, leading Deeds, a above state legislator, by about bifold digits. After two terms of Democrats at the helm, voters may afresh be appetite change. Every four years since 1997, Virginia has called the applicant of the opposite affair from the one that controls the White House.

Prospects arise better for Democrats in New Jersey, area embattled Gov. Jon Corzine is in a close race with Republican Chris Christie in this year's added governor's race. Corzine is favored to win; it's a Democratic-leaning state and absolute Chris Daggett is sucking abutment from both parties.

Obama will be campaigning for Corzine on Wednesday and has stops lined up for Deeds, too, afore Election Day.

The outcomes won't adumbrate abutting year's midterm results. So much could change. Jobs could return. Health care overhaul could pass. War in Afghanistan could be winding down. People could feel better about area the country is heading.

But given Virginia's newfound swing-voting behavior, the McDonnell-Deeds outcome will be a key admeasurement of how America feels and, perhaps added importantly, how absolute voters are acting ahead of the 2010 elections. Independents will be analytical as Democrats try to protect their majorities in Congress and pick up governorships in a number of states.

Here in Virginia, as well as in the wider U.S., Republican crossover voters and independents are breaking from the Democrats, partly because they're put off by Obama's government expansion and expensive policy proposals like bloom care. The question in Virginia is how they'll split between McDonnell and Deeds - if they turn out at all.

"Neither one of them makes me particularly excited," said Dale Thompson, a gun-shop buyer who shuns affair labels and thinks "society's a mess." Still, he's acknowledging McDonnell - "the least angry of the bunch."

Down the str! eet, toy -store buyer Bill Lupinacci, 51, a Republican who backed Democrat Tim Kaine for governor in 2006 and Obama in 2008, is undecided - and turned off by both the candidates for the state's top office. "They're spending best of their time on attack ads rather than putting forth their positions on the issues."

McDonnell has been forced to defend his graduate academy apriorism from 20 years ago that criticized career women, gays and cohabiting bachelor couples. Deeds has drawn criticism for afresh refusing to specify how he would raise the $1 billion a year bare to revive analytical transportation projects.

The race additionally is an important test of whether the droves of base Democratic voters - the blacks, Hispanics, bachelor women, young bodies and first-time voters whom Obama admiring aftermost abatement - will turn out and abutment a Democrat if the admiral is not on the ballot.

Some are certain not to cast votes this abatement because only the best motivated bodies turn out in off-year elections.

There additionally are break that some Virginians who made up the president's diverse winning coalition were enthusiastic Obama 2008 voters, not reliable Democratic Party voters, and perhaps not alike Obama 2012 voters, should he run for re-election as expected. That would mean they would be up for grabs come 2010.

Consider Jake Crocker, a self-employed marketing adviser who owns Richmond's Easy Street cafe. He backed Obama and said he'd gladly do so again. But he's voting for Republican McDonnell because he sees similarities to pro-business Democrat Mark Warner, the above governor and now senator. "He's a guy who gets it," Crocker said of McDonnell.

Conversely, Eddie DuRant, an environmental adviser in Virginia Beach who supported Obama a year ago, afresh absitively to vote for Deeds. DuRant was swayed by McDonnell's graduate thesis, saying, "It appears he ! has an u ltraconservative amusing agenda that is not in band with what I believe."

Places like Purcellville in Loudoun County, a sprawling swath to the west of Washington, could provide clues to aborigine attitudes in added swing-voting places in battlefield states: Arapahoe County in suburban Denver, Anoka County abreast Minneapolis-St. Paul, Westmoreland County abreast Pittsburgh, Jefferson County abreast St. Louis.

Around here, farmland, country manors and a bevy of loyal GOP voters have given way to shopping centers, subdivisions and a mishmash of Republicans, Democrats and independents in recent years. Loudoun County's accelerated advance has changed its politics; the area has become a analytical front in statewide elections.

Long a reliably Republican bastion, this is area Democrats aboriginal felt the start of a national political sea change in 2005. Their gubernatorial candidate, Kaine, won the county and the race. It accepted to be a harbinger for 2006 when Democrats, fueled by huge assets in counties like Loudoun, won one Virginia Senate seat, and 2008, when they claimed the second while voting for a Democratic presidential applicant for the aboriginal time since 1964.

This county and others adjacent are expected to advance either McDonnell or Deeds over the top - and accord important clues about the country's aggregate state of mind.

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Bob Lewis reported from Richmond.

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WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration was elated a month ago when the Russian president said sanctions against Iran for its nuclear program could become "inevitable." Washington's reaction may have been significantly premature.

Dmitry Medvedev's words were seen as a major Kremlin shift and one that would buttress U.S. attempts to combine renewed negotiations with Tehran and a united front that threatened Iran with punishing global sanctions for failure to come clean.

The United States, Britain, France and Germany believe Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon behind the cover of what Tehran says is a program designed solely to enable a homegrown network of reactors to generate electricity.

Russia and China, the other two key players who engage Iran on the nuclear issue, had routinely rejected tough sanctions, arguing that negotiations were the way forward.

But Medvedev emerged from talks with President Barack Obama on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly last month to declare of Iran: "In some cases, sanctions are inevitable."

While clearly delighted with those words, the White House hotly rejected analyses that Medvedev was signaling a course change as a payoff for Obama's decision a week earlier to scrap a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe. The U.S. missile system, conceived under the Bush administration purportedly to defend against attack from Iran, had become a major factor in deteriorating U.S.-Russian relations.

Nevertheless, the president's top Russia adviser acknowledged that the decision against moving forward on missile defense - a deployment that Moscow said would have threatened its security - was a factor in! Medvede v's remarks.

"Is it the case that it (the missile defense decision) changes the climate - I think that's true, of course," Mike McFaul said at the time.

While Medvedev said sanctions could become necessary, Moscow was not long in telling Washington - and major trading partner Iran - that the time had not come yet. That clearly deflated expectations raised when Washington drew so much attention to Medvedev's much hailed remarks.

"Threats, sanctions and threats of pressure in the current situation, we are convinced, would be counterproductive," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was in the Russian capital last week.

And Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who absented himself on a trip to Beijing, drew a line under Lavrov's comments.

"If we speak about some kind of sanctions now, before we take concrete steps, we will fail to create favorable conditions for negotiations," Putin said. "That is why we consider such talk premature."

Positions could clarify somewhat in Monday talks in Vienna, where the U.S., France, Russia, the U.N. nuclear agency and Iran hash out a proposal that would send some of Tehran's low enriched uranium to Russia for further processing to fuel an aging Iranian reactor used for medical research.

If expanded, that program might become the model for undercutting the need for Iran to continue with Iranian uranium enrichment, a technology which could shortly achieve the sophistication to boost low enriched uranium for use in a nuclear weapon.

And later this month, Iran will allow U.N. inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to examine a newly disclosed uranium enrichment facility under construction near the holy city of Qom, a nuclear plant that Iran only notified the world of just days before it was announced to the ! world by Obama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Iran's new, if limited readiness to cooperate after years of stonewalling once its secret nuclear program became public could portend a more significant shift by Tehran. And Medvedev could be partly responsible.

"This time, it seems to me they (the Russians) are moving a bit to suggest to Tehran that Russia should not be taken for granted or ignored when it comes to meeting what Russia also says are legitimate expectations about Iranian behavior," said James Collins, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia.

But, he said, the "administration probably overplayed their hand" in that the Russians' patience for negotiating with the Iranians could stretch far beyond that of Washington. In the U.S. the urgency of capping Tehran's perceived nuclear threat is deeply enmeshed in the messy and highly partisan domestic political climate - a heavy drag on Obama's ambitious agenda.

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EDITOR'S NOTE - Steven R. Hurst reports from the White House for The Associated Press and has covered international relations for 30 years.

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