TheAgitator.com
Friday’s Incredible News Dump
Sunday, July 12th, 2009Lovely how the government tells us how it’s been misbehaving at a time when the fewest number of people are likely to be paying attention.
First, there’s this:
The Bush administration built an unprecedented surveillance operation to pull in mountains of information far beyond the warrantless wiretapping previously acknowledged, a team of federal inspectors general reported Friday, questioning the legal basis for the effort but shielding almost all details on grounds they’re still too secret to reveal.
The report, compiled by five inspectors general, refers to “unprecedented collection activities” by U.S. intelligence agencies under an executive order signed by President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks…
They particularly criticize John Yoo, a deputy assistant attorney general who wrote legal memos undergirding the policy. His boss, Attorney General John Ashcroft, was not aware until March 2004 of the exact nature of the intelligence operations beyond wiretapping that he had been approving for the previous two and a half years, the report says.
Most of the intelligence leads generated under what was known as the “President’s Surveillance Program” did not have any connection to terrorism, the report said. But FBI agents told the authors that the “mere possibility of the leads producing useful information made investigating the leads worthwhile.”…
The inspectors general interviewed more than 200 people inside and outside the government, but five former Bush administration officials refused to be questioned. They were Ashcroft, Yoo, former CIA Director George Tenet, former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and David Addington, an aide to former Vice President Dick Cheney.
According to the report, Addington could personally decide who in the administration was “read into” — allowed access to — the classified program…
The report questioned the legal advice used by Bush to set up the program, pinpointing omissions and questionable legal memos written by Yoo, in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. The Justice Department withdrew the memos years ago.
The report says Yoo’s analysis approving the program ignored a law designed to restrict the government’s authority to conduct electronic surveillance during wartime, and did so without fully notifying Congress. And it said flaws in Yoo’s memos later presented “a serious impediment” to recertifying the program.
Yoo insisted that the president’s wiretapping program had only to comply with Fourth Amendment protections against search and seizure — but the report said Yoo ignored the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act, which had previously overseen federal national security surveillance.
Seems to me that there are only one of two conclusions one can draw about Yoo in all of this. Either he was corrupt and was criminally inventing bogus legal excuses for law-breaking, or he genuinely believes what he wrote, in which case he’s essentially incompetent. At the very least, both scenarios argue in favor of him no longer being permitted to practice law.
And then there’s this, also released on Friday:
The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency’s director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday…
The report that Mr. Cheney was behind the decision to conceal the still-unidentified program from Congress deepened the mystery surrounding it, suggesting that the Bush administration had put a high priority on the program and its secrecy.
So what was the function of this secret program? The NY Times doesn’t speculate. But the Washington Times Eli Lake got a tip:
The exact nature of the program remains a mystery. This official hinted that the secret program involved assassinations overseas but declined to provide further details.
Assassinations. Huh. So maybe Sy Hersh was right?
Maybe another celebrity will die tomorrow so cable news won’t have to get into all of this.
With proof like this, most likely we’ll see high ranking officials put in jail.
OK, so we’ll see everyone get off completely.
Does Tommy Chong get angry when he reads this stuff?
“Maybe another celebrity will die tomorrow so cable news won’t have to get into all of this.” BAAAM!!!
“It’s just like the show before
The news is
Just another show
With sex and violence…”
- Jane’s Addiction, “Ted, Just Admit It”
Hey, at least we’ve won the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as democracy blooms throughtout the middle east. Terrorism and intentional bombings of markets and places of worship has all but vanished world-wide.
When you set all of those irrefutable security gains against the picayune transgressions of the well meaning Bush administrations it’s really no contest.
I’ll go up-chuck now.
I hope that at some point, I have ended up on a list of “potential subversives.” I will be highly disappointed if I haven’t. I fit all the criteria. Former USMC war vet….libertarian….atheist….refusing to cooperate with a federal investigator seeking info on my neighbor….
I wonder if they like the porn I view and download? : )
The founders are spinning like tops in their graves.
Over at defensetech.org, a lot of people with military experience and insight are speculating on what the secret program(s) encompassed. A number point to DOMESTIC infiltration, assassinations and (cue Radley) warrantless entry. Especially interesting to me is the number of “clean” burgularies etc in Northern Virginia.
Worth a look, if you can ignore the bigots who got involved later in the discussion.
Not necessary. The Michael Jackson story is good for at least another two weeks.
I thought this was the saddest statement of truth that I had seen today:
“Maybe another celebrity will die tomorrow so cable news won’t have to get into all of this.”
Until Mister DNA posted this:
“Not necessary. The Michael Jackson story is good for at least another two weeks.”
There is a reason why they were not briefed. Look at the current situation, they were just told about it in a classified brief and it is already in the news.
In response to accusations that the programs violated the law, I hear that the CIA is saying that they kept Congressional leaders informed. The problem with this response is that this is beside the point: “keeping Congressional leaders informed” is NOT the same as having a law that authorizes CIA action.
While I understand why things should be kept secret, I also understand that the rule of law is something that is fundamental to the American experiment. Not following our own laws seems to often end up biting us in our own behinds.
There is a reason why they were not briefed. Look at the current situation, they were just told about it in a classified brief and it is already in the news.
The problem is that the entire concept of a classified program completely contradicts the entire principle of democratic government.
If I’m a Congressman and I find out about a program that I disagree with and want to stop, I absolutely, positively 100% have the unlimited right to disclose the existence of that program to my constituents and tell them that I will fight to stop it. Period. I don’t care if it’s the D-Day invasion and the Manhattan project and the identity of every US covert operative worldwide combined.
The Constitution grants the Congress the right to declare its minutes secret, so maybe I can’t disclose direct quotes from the House floor, but if the executive branch is using taxpayer dollars to conduct policy, every aspect of that policy is subject to political debate. It’s absolutely ludicrous that these disclosures are limited to only certain Congresspersons, and it’s beyond ludicrous that anyone in the executive branch thinks they’re entitled to control what a member of Congress does with the information before they have it. Constituent communication comes before literally everything else, because if there are limits on what a member of Congress can tell his constituents in the context of electoral politics then our government isn’t legitimate.
Since we know that these politicians don’t actually care whether the law was broken, we have to ask ourselves why this is coming out now. I envision this:
Any time the Bush administration got in trouble, they trotted out some terrorism-related idea to obfuscate the issues. Now Bush serves the same purpose for the Obama administration. No surprises here.
Bush, Yoo, Ashcroft, Cheney, Palin….They’re all either out of office or didn’t get elected, Radley.
Instead of harping on stuff that now out of date, how about you concentrate on what the current gang of criminals are up to?
When this stuff mattered, nobody paid any real attention. At least you managed to not point out which of the Palin children is having sex….
Peter, maybe you should get your own blog?
I’ll use that line of defense if I ever end up in court and see how it works out for me.
There’s no way that Yoo is dumb enough to truly believe his legal opinions; these guys knew how bad they were which is why they were trying to keep them from Comey’s and Goldsmith ’s eyes. Thank god those two stood up for the rule of law.
and SJE:
a former top Bush administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the issue, said he was certain that, if the nature of the program could be revealed, it would be seen as “no big deal.”
he may not be lying, I wouldn’t be surprised if that offical sees “domestic infiltration, assassinations and warrantless entry” as no big deal.
As much as everybody seems to hate her, doesn’t this get Pelosi off the hook from her comments several weeks ago that the CIA lied to her committee about their activities? I’m sure Republicans will be lining up to apologize…
@Mojotron: Don’t forget to give John Ashcroft some credit, too. He told Addington to go fly a kite also.
@Sam: I don’t think it does, no. Pelosi didn’t claim that the CIA concealed the existence of this program from her. (how could she have, if it were just recently revealed?)
Pelosi claimed that the CIA lied about interrogation techniques, up to and including torture, that it was using, and the CIA said she was full of crap because Congress knew everything they were doing and said nothing (thus giving tacit approval).
It has always been possible that she was telling the truth, but I doubt it. I have no doubt that there is enough prevarication in Washington to go around and that everyone up there is full of shit. I am, however, something of a cynic.
Nancy is the used car salesman of the current congress.
If her lips are moving, she is lying!
There is not a better person qualified to start a witch hunt than a bonafied witch!
Hey news suckers, just hold up a mirror instead of a recording device. She will melt.
“bonafied”
No.
John,
Except that it is now plausible that the CIA was lying about specific topics of importance. Wasn’t there some debate about exactly how forthright the CIA was being with the techniques being used?
Seymour Hersh is a badass! He looks very credible, from what I’ve found. Anyone have anything that would raise red flags about the guy?
I think the Ds are clever enough to hold on to the most damning evidence of the Bush/Cheney programs until next POTUS election year.
Of course, it’s entirely possible I’m over rating their manipulative abilities.
Bob Graham has backed Pelosi and caught the CIA lying about this already.
Graham is known as a meticulous note-taker and has maintained a daily log that fills hundreds of spiral notebooks, which now reside at the University of Florida Library of Florida History.
“Several weeks ago, when this issue started to bubble up, I called the CIA and asked for the dates in which I had been briefed,” Graham tells Robert Siegel. “They gave me four: two in April of ‘02, two in September.” Graham says he consulted his logs “and determined that on three of the four dates there was no briefing held.”
He adds: “On one date, Sept. 27, ‘02, there was a briefing held and, according to my notes, it was on the topic of detainee interrogation.” Graham says the CIA was initially reticent when he told the agency what he had found in his notes.
“They said, ‘We will check and call back,’” Graham recalled. “When they finally did a few days later, they indicated that I was correct. Their information was in error. There was no briefing on the first three of four dates.” Graham says the agency offered no explanation regarding how it came up with the other dates.
…
“I’m not impressed with the credibility of the CIA as it was being led in 2002,” Graham says. “I think it had become an agency that instead of following the admonition to speak truth to power, it was trying to speak what it thought power wanted to hear.”
that being said, I don’t think the dems on that committee were completely naive- I think that the CIA didn’t tell them but they had an idea what was going on but didn’t probe further because they’re spineless and knew they wouldn’t like what they’d uncover.
“…we’ve won the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as democracy blooms throughtout the middle east. Terrorism and intentional bombings of markets and places of worship has all but vanished world-wide.”
But we now get to justify things based on “what would’ve happened if we hadn’t acted”. I’m looking at TARP and the bailouts. If I count the number of public admissions of failure or jail sentences, the US Government has never made a wrong decision and no one has ever committed a crime! USA #1 Super Terrific!
Fluffy is correct. According the the Constitution, ONLY Congress has any secrecy powers. Neither the courts nor the executive have any granted power to keep anything secret.
About John Yoo: Yes he’s an arse. BUT do not look at him as the problem. Read _The_Cult_of_the_Presidency for much more info. The types of activites that the Bush administration was engaged in need to be recognized as part and parcel of things in the US beginning at least with Lincoln (_The_Real_Lincoln_). THe current screaming, yelling, and finger-pointing are simply posturing so that those who now hold power can keep the stupid, ignorant public scared and clamoring for protection from the very people the public needs to fear.
Tiocfaidh ar la!
Attach those suckers to a generator and you’ve solved the energy crisis.
There is, of course, nothing to fear – no danger of this sort of thing being done to anyone other than the baddest of the bad.
“Dr Kelly died shortly after he was exposed as the source for a story claiming the Government “probably knew” that a claim Iraq could attack with weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes was not true. ”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5811102/Doctors-demand-inquest-into-death-of-Dr-David-Kelly.html
Fluffy is correct. According the the Constitution, ONLY Congress has any secrecy powers. Neither the courts nor the executive have any granted power to keep anything secret.
Should each and every congresscritter have the power to undermine each and every military operation whose success would require secrecy? Such a policy would neutralize the ability of the U.S. to wage war against any country which managed to install a covert operative in the Congress, and would consequently leave the U.S. at the mercy of any such country.
I would expect that when the Constitution was written, it would have been expected that the military leadership of any country would be expected to keep secrets; I see no reason to believe the U.S. was supposed to be different in that regard. While the Constitution doesn’t explicitly authorize the President to order that the military keep any particular matters secret, it also doesn’t explicitly authorize most of the other things that a military leader would be expected to do. My inference from that omission would be that the Framers didn’t think it necessary to go into such detail.
@FWB: What about the fact that Congress has directed that certain information be kept secret? For example, the President is vested with the Commander in Chief power. Congress has determined that in order for him to carry out that power, certain information must be kept secret and enacts a statute to that effect. That is a statute that Congress has determined is necessary and proper in furtherance of the Commander in Chief power, so why is it not proper?
Supercat:
It really depends on where you think the authority for government secrecy comes from. If it’s the inherent power of the presidency, or the national security apparatus, or the military, then yeah, congressmen have no right to interfere. On the other hand, if you think that authority comes from the consent of us, the governed, then it’s hard to see how our elected representatives are somehow bound to maintain whatever secrecy the executive branch decides is necessary, even when that involves apparent ignoring of the constitution, violation of basic human rights, or scary power grabs that might call the future of democracy in the country into question.
The congress has the power to censure their own. If they feel that a congressman has leaked too much, they can use that power. Their leadership can remove people from committees. The executive branch doesn’t and mustn’t have the power to decide what congressmen are allowed to say and do in the course of their oversight duties.
Mojotron:
I suspect this is right, and true of a whole bunch of scary police state measures. If the CIA implied or hinted at harsher things being done, or wider surveillance nets being cast, many congressmen may have decided that they didn’t want to know more. And anyone bright enough to make it into Congress must know that what the agency tells its oversight people is a fraction of what it really does internally, which in turn is a fraction of what its agents do far away from their supervisors. With explicit anti-torture policies and CIA/military management/commanders dead set against torture, you can bet that CIA and military people would have been trying to beat answers out of some prisoners in various deep dark holes. Explicitly permitting it just makes it more widespread, and probably allows even more extreme stuff in the deep dark holes.