NSA analyst ‘improperly accessed’ Bill Clinton’s e-mail through domestic surveillance program.
NSA analyst ‘improperly accessed’ Bill Clinton’s e-mail through domestic surveillance program.
The New York Times reports today that members of Congress are increasingly concerned about the extent of the NSA’s domestic surveillance program, particularly the overcollection of the private telephone calls and e-mail messages of Americans. An anonymous former intelligence analyst tells reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau that during much of the Bush years, the NSA “tolerated significant collection and examination of domestic e-mail messages without warrants.” Reportedly, one of the accessed domestic e-mail accounts belonged to former President Bill Clinton:
He said he and other analysts were trained to use a secret database, code-named Pinwale, in 2005 that archived foreign and domestic e-mail messages. He said Pinwale allowed N.S.A. analysts to read large volumes of e-mail messages to and from Americans as long as they fell within certain limits — no more than 30 percent of any database search, he recalled being told — and Americans were not explicitly singled out in the searches.
The former analyst added that his instructors had warned against committing any abuses, telling his class that another analyst had been investigated because he had improperly accessed the personal e-mail of former President Bill Clinton.
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As U.S. Attorney, Chris Christie Approved Warrantless Tracking Of Suspects Using Cell Phone GPS
As U.S. Attorney, Chris Christie Approved Warrantless Tracking Of Suspects Using Cell Phone GPS
While serving as a U.S. attorney during the Bush administration, Christopher Christie, now a Republican candidate for Governor in New Jersey, tracked the whereabouts of citizens through their cell phones without warrants. The ACLU obtained the documents detailing the spying program from the Justice Department in an ongoing lawsuit over cell phone tracking.
While the documents reveal 79 such cases on or after Sept. 12, 2001, they do not specify how many of the applications were made during Christie’s tenure. Christie served as U.S. attorney from Jan. 17, 2002 through November 2008. ACLU staff attorney Catherine Crump noted:
Tracking the location of people’s cell phones reveals intimate details of their daily routines and is highly invasive of their privacy. The government is violating the Constitution when it fails to get a search warrant before tracking people this way.
The new revelations about the cell phone tracking program under Christie is yet another example of the warrantless spying programs authorized under the Bush administration. Previous programs approved without a court order or warrant have included the secret program to monitor radiation levels at over 100 Muslim sites and the NSA spying program on the phone and e-mail communications of thousands of people inside the U.S. These programs run contrary to the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which forbids “unreasonable searches” and sets out specific requirements for warrants, including “probable cause.”
During his tenure as U.S. attorney, Christie also awarded his former boss, John Ashcroft, a $28-52 million dollar no-bid contract to “monitor a large corporation willing to settle criminal charges out of court.” Former Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach blasted the decision, saying that awarding a no-bid contract “suggests other political things, and that seems to me to be as wrong as it can be.” Christie also doled out “a multi-million-dollar, no bid contract to an ex-federal prosecutor who declined to criminally prosecute Christie’s brother on stock fraud charges two years earlier.”
Christie’s campaign manager, Bill Stepien, declined to comment on the cell phone spying program “due to pending litigation.”
Harman: ‘I’m Just Very Disappointed’ NSA Wiretapped Me, After I Voted To Allow Them To
Harman: ‘I’m Just Very Disappointed’ NSA Wiretapped Me, After I Voted To Allow Them To
On Sunday, CQ reported that the NSA had wiretapped Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), listening in on a call in which she apparently offered a quid pro quo to a lobbyist group. Harman has vigorously denied the reports. Today, she appeared on MSNBC to express her shock and outrage that her phone calls were listened to, saying she was “disappointed” that the U.S. could have allowed such “a gross abuse of power”:
HARMAN: I’m just very disappointed that my country — I’m an American citizen just like you are — could have permitted what I think is a gross abuse of power in recent years. I’m one member of Congress who may be caught up in it, but I have a bully pulpit and I can fight back. I’m thinking about others who have no bully pulpit and may not be aware, as I was not, that right now somewhere, someone’s listening in on their conversations, and they’re innocent Americans.
Watch it:
Harman’s anger seems a bit disingenuous, considering that she was one of the earliest supporters of Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program. When the practice was revealed by the New York Times in 2005, she defended it as “essential,” though admitted she was “concerned” about its scope:
“I have been briefed since 2003 on a highly classified NSA foreign collection program that targeted Al Qaeda. I believe the program is essential to U.S. national security and that its disclosure has damaged critical intelligence capabilities,” Harman said. “Like many Americans, I am deeply concerned by reports that this program in fact goes far beyond the measures to target Al Qaeda about which I was briefed.”
In fact, in 2004 she “urged that The [New York] Times not publish the article” revealing Bush’s program.
Indeed, she issued a press release in 2007 specifically highlighting that the updated FISA bill she approved of would fully allow warrantless wiretapping:
This bill does a good job — a far better job than the bill reported last month by the Senate Intelligence Committee. … This legislation arms our intelligence professionals with the ability to listen to foreign targets — without a warrant — to uncover plots that threaten US national security. The bill also protects the Constitutional rights of Americans by requiring the FISA court, an Article III Court, to approve procedures to ensure that Americans are not targeted for warrantless surveillance.
To her credit, Harman warned against “a slippery legal slope to potential unprecedented abuse of innocent Americans’ privacy” and stated her opposition to granting telecommunications companies retroactive immunity. Perhaps her outrage at being a target of wiretapping herself will force her to realize that the program she deemed “essential” invaded the privacy of untold millions of Americans.
Harman asks Holder to release full transcripts of her NSA wiretapped conversations.
Harman asks Holder to release full transcripts of her NSA wiretapped conversations.
Yesterday, CQ’s Jeff Stein reported that the NSA has transcripts of a telephone conversation between Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) and unnamed Israeli agents. The recordings show Harman offering the Israelis her efforts to lobby the Justice Department to “reduce espionage-related charges against two officials of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee,” and the Israelis indicating willingness to lobby soon-to-be House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to name Harman chair of the Intelligence Committee. Harman’s office released a statement yesterday denying the report. Today, Harman released a letter she wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder, saying she is “outraged” that the NSA wiretapped her conversations and that Holder should release the full NSA transcripts:
I am outraged to learn from reports leaked to the media over the last several days that the FBI or NSA secretly wiretapped my conversations in 2005 or 2006 while I was Ranking Member on the House Intelligence Committee.
This abuse of power is outrageous and I call on your Department to release all transcripts and other investigative material involving me in an unredacted form. It is my intention to make this material available to the public. [...]
[I]t is entirely appropriate to converse with advocacy organizations and constituent groups, and I am concerned about a chilling effect on other elected officials who may find themselves in my situation.
“Let me be absolutely clear,” Harman wrote. “I never contacted the Department of Justice, the White House or anyone else to seek favorable treatment regarding the national security cases on which I was briefed, or any other cases.”
NYT report: National Security Agency tried to spy on a member of Congress.
NYT report: National Security Agency tried to spy on a member of Congress.
The New York Times’ Eric Lichtblau and James Risen report that the National Security Agency engaged in “overcollection” of e-mail messages and phone calls of Americans last year. The legal authority given to the NSA authorizes the surveillance of targets “reasonably believed” to be outside the United States. The Obama Justice Department said it “detected issues that raised concerns,” but claims that the problems have now been resolved. “[T]he issue appears focused in part on technical problems in the N.S.A.’s ability at times to distinguish between communications inside the United States and those overseas.” Lichtblau and Risen document one particular instance of misconduct involving the wiretapping of a member of Congress:
And in one previously undisclosed episode, the N.S.A. tried to wiretap a member of Congress without a warrant, an intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said.
The agency believed that the congressman, whose identity could not be determined, was in contact — as part of a Congressional delegation to the Middle East in 2005 or 2006 — with an extremist who had possible terrorist ties and was already under surveillance, the official said. The agency then sought to eavesdrop on the congressman’s conversations, the official said.
The official said the plan was ultimately blocked because of concerns from some intelligence officials about using the N.S.A., without court oversight, to spy on a member of Congress.
Congressional officials said they have “begun inquiries” into the matter.
Obama administration invokes ‘state secrets’ claim to defend Bush’s wiretapping program.
Obama administration invokes ‘state secrets’ claim to defend Bush’s wiretapping program.
The Obama administration is “invoking government secrecy in defending the Bush administration’s wiretapping program” against a lawsuit brought by AT&T customers who claim “federal agents illegally intercepted their phone calls and gained access to their records.” Justice Department lawyers yesterday demanded dismissal of a lawsuit brought by the Electronic Frontier Foundation against Bush officials, arguing that the information constitutes privileged “state secrets.” Moreover, the DOJ claims the Patriot Act bars lawsuits against “illegal government surveillance unless there is ‘willful disclosure’ of the illegally intercepted communications.” The SF Chronicle reports:
Disclosure of the information sought by the customers, “which concerns how the United States seeks to detect and prevent terrorist attacks, would cause exceptionally grave harm to national security,” Justice Department lawyers said in papers filed Friday in San Francisco.
Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a lawyer for the customers, said Monday the filing was disappointing in light of the Obama presidential campaign’s “unceasing criticism of Bush-era secrecy and promise for more transparency.”
Glenn Greenwald argues, “In other words, beyond even the outrageously broad ‘state secrets’ privilege invented by the Bush administration and now embraced fully by the Obama administration, the Obama DOJ has now invented a brand new claim of government immunity, one which literally asserts that the U.S. Government is free to intercept all of your communications (calls, emails and the like) and — even if what they’re doing is blatantly illegal and they know it’s illegal — you are barred from suing them unless they ‘willfully disclose’ to the public what they have learned.”
Risen: I May Have Been A Victim Of The NSA’s Program Spying On Journalists
Risen: I May Have Been A Victim Of The NSA’s Program Spying On Journalists
Earlier this week on MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” former National Security Agency (NSA) analyst Russell Tice revealed that the agency had “monitored all communications” of Americans — specifically targeting journalists. To discuss this development, Olbermann yesterday hosted Pulitzer-Prize winning New York Times reporter James Risen, who famously angered the Bush administration by revealing the government’s domestic wiretapping program and its secret snooping on the financial records of thousands of Americans allegedly linked to terrorists.
Since that time, the Bush Justice Department had been trying to identify Risen’s sources for his book on the nation’s spy agencies, called State of War. In April, the New York Times reported that former government officials had been called before a grand jury and confronted with phone records documenting their calls with Risen. Neither Risen nor the New York Times had received a subpoena for those records.
Risen told Olbermann that in light of Tice’s revelations, he believes he may have been a target of the NSA’s journalist-spying program:
OLBERMANN: Do you believe you have been a target of this NSA wiretap program?
RISEN: What I know for a fact is that the Bush administration got my phone records. Whether that was obtained by the FBI or the NSA, my lawyers and I have been trying to investigate that. We’re not sure. But we know for a fact that they showed my phone records to other people in the federal grand jury. And we have asked the court to investigate that.
Risen added that he believes the purpose of the NSA’s efforts was to “have a chilling effect on potential whistle blowers in the government, to make them realize that there is a big brother out there that will get them if they step out of line.” Watch it:
Transcript: More »
Former NSA Analyst: NSA ‘Monitored All Communications’ Of Americans, Targeted Journalists
Former NSA Analyst: NSA ‘Monitored All Communications’ Of Americans, Targeted Journalists
Last night on MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” former analyst for the National Security Agency Russell Tice revealed that the NSA had “monitored all communications” of Americans and specifically targeted journalists:
TICE: The National Security Agency had access to all Americans’ communications — faxes, phone calls, and their computer communications. And it didn’t matter whether you were in Kansas, in the middle of the country, and you never made any foreign communications at all. They monitored all communications. [...] But an organization that was collected on were U.S. news organizations and reporters and journalists.
OLBERMANN: To what purpose? I mean, is there a file somewhere full of every e-mail sent by all the reporters at the “New York Times?” Is there a recording somewhere of every conversation I had with my little nephew in upstate New York? Is it like that?
TICE: If it was involved in this specific avenue of collection, it would be everything. Yes. It would be everything.
Tice, a major whistleblower who helped reveal President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program to the New York Times in 2005, also told Olbermann that the agency sought specifically “to be deceptive” to prevent congressional committees from learning more about the program, calling it “a shell game”:
TICE: The agency would tailor some of their briefings to try to be deceptive for — whether it be, you know, a congressional committee or someone they really didn’t want to know exactly what was going on. So there would be a lot of bells and whistles in a briefing, and quite often, you know, the meat of the briefing was deceptive.
Watch portions of the interview (full interview here):
In October, two other whistleblowers told ABC News that the NSA “routinely” listened in on Americans’ phone calls and agents would often share “salacious or tantalizing” intercepted calls with each other. All this despite Bush’s frequent protestations that his illegal wiretaping program was “limited,” that it targeted only “a phone call of an al Qaeda, known al Qaeda suspect,” and that he ensured “that our civil liberties of our citizens are treated with respect.”
To the end, Bush and Cheney defended the program. In his final days in office, Cheney declared that “it always aggravated” him that the Times won a Pulitzer for exposing his administration’s illegal spying program.
FISA court expected to rule that President can wiretap without a court order.
FISA court expected to rule that President can wiretap without a court order.
The New York Times reports that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is expected to issue a major ruling validating “the power of the president and Congress to wiretap international phone calls and intercept e-mail messages without a court order,”even when U.S. residents’ personal communications are involved:
In validating the government’s wide authority to collect foreign intelligence, it may offer legal credence to the Bush administration’s repeated assertions that the president has constitutional authority to act without specific court approval in ordering national security eavesdropping.
Separately, in his confirmation hearing today, Attorney General nominee Eric Holder said the President cannot violate FISA:
FEINGOLD: Is there anything in the FISA statute that makes you believe that the president has the ability under some other inherent power to disregard the FISA statute?
HOLDER: No, I do not see that in the FISA statute.
Watch it:
“I think that’s a very important break in favor of the rule of law that we’ve been waiting for in this country for many years,” remarked Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI).
Whitehouse: If Obama doesn’t investigate Bush’s crimes, I will.
Whitehouse: If Obama doesn’t investigate Bush’s crimes, I will.
President-elect Obama this week said his team was in the middle of “evaluating” Bush administration policies to see whether a criminal investigation would be worthwhile. NPR reports that Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) says that he understands Obama’s reluctance to pursue investigations but that he may take matters into his own hands:
“I think that there’s a lot that remains to look at, and I appreciate that President Obama doesn’t want to make it his purpose as a new president, with America in real distress in many directions, to go back and look at all this, but I think we in Congress have an independent responsibility, and I fully intend to discharge that responsibility,” Whitehouse said.
In a 487-page report out today recapping Bush’s “imperial presidency,” House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) recommends that “the incoming Administration finally begin an independent criminal review of activities of the outgoing Administration.”
Cheney: It ‘Always Aggravated Me’ That The NYT Won A Pulitzer For Exposing Warrantless Wiretapping
Cheney: It ‘Always Aggravated Me’ That The NYT Won A Pulitzer For Exposing Warrantless Wiretapping
On Dec. 16, 2005, the New York Times published an article by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, revealing that President Bush had secretly authorized the NSA to “eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States…without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying.” The blockbuster article, which exposed one of the Bush administration’s biggest secrets, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 2006.
Discussing the wiretapping program on Bill Bennett’s radio show today, Vice President Cheney called the program “important,” adding that it “always aggravated” him that the Times was rewarded for its reporting:
CHENEY: What happened then was they had the information we had, they knew how we were doing it, they knew what we were producing through that process. But then when — Nancy Pelosi, for example, was part of that group. But then it became public. The New York Times broke the story I think in December of ‘05, won the Pulitzer for it, which always aggravated me.
Listen here:
With his gripes over the New York Times’ Pulitzer, Cheney joins the list of conservatives, including Bennett, who have attacked the decision to reward those who revealed the secret program:
- “They win Pulitzer Prizes - I don’t think what they did was worthy of an award - I think what they did was worthy of jail,” — radio host Bill Bennett
“The Pulitzer Prize for treason,” — Powerline’s Scott Johnson
“After the quasi-collaborationist AP photo awards and the national security-damaging NYT awards, that’s just as well because I wouldn’t want the thing in the house,” — columnist Mark Steyn
“I don’t understand why you should pat yourself on the back for breaking the law and possibly, potentially, putting Americans at risk,” Accuracy in Media’s Cliff Kincaid
In December, former Justice Department official Thomas Tamm explained to Newsweek why he blew the whistle on the program, saying that it “was something the other branches of the government—and the public—ought to know about.” Tamm says that when a Justice superior said the program might be “illegal,” he thought, “I’m a law-enforcement officer and I’m participating in something that is illegal?”
Transcript: More »
Conyers introduces bill creating commission to investigate Bush’s torture and wiretapping policies.
Conyers introduces bill creating commission to investigate Bush’s torture and wiretapping policies.
TPM notes that House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) has introduced legislation setting up a National Commission on Presidential War Powers and Civil Liberties. The panel’s goal is to “establish a Blue Ribbon Commission comprised of experts outside government service to investigate the broad range of policies of the Bush administration that were undertaken by the Bush administration under claims of unreviewable war powers.” While he is unlikely to prosecute Bush officials for war crimes, President-elect Obama has hinted at support for such a commission.
Obama’s OLC nominee: ‘We must regain our ability to feel outrage whenever our government acts lawlessly.’
Obama’s OLC nominee: ‘We must regain our ability to feel outrage whenever our government acts lawlessly.’
President-elect Barack Obama announced today that Dawn Johnsen will serve as the next Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). Salon’s Glenn Greenwald calls the pick “Obama’s best yet, perhaps by far.” As evidence, Greenwald highlights an article in Slate that Johnsen authored last year, in which she excoriated John Yoo’s infamous torture memo:
I want to second Dahlia’s frustration with those who don’t see the newly released Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) torture memo as a big deal. Where is the outrage, the public outcry?! The shockingly flawed content of this memo, the deficient processes that led to its issuance, the horrific acts it encouraged, the fact that it was kept secret for years and that the Bush administration continues to withhold other memos like it — all demand our outrage.
Yes, we’ve seen much of it before. And yes, we are counting down the remaining months. But we must regain our ability to feel outrage whenever our government acts lawlessly and devises bogus constitutional arguments for outlandishly expansive presidential power. Otherwise, our own deep cynicism, about the possibility for a President and presidential lawyers to respect legal constraints, itself will threaten the rule of law — and not just for the remaining nine months of this administration, but for years and administrations to come.
Johnsen also criticized the Democratic Congress for legalizing Bush’s surveillance program. She also wrote passionately about restoring our “nation’s honor” by condemning “our nation’s past transgressions” and rejecting “Bush’s corruption of our American ideals.”
Gonzales: ‘What Is It That I Did That Is So Fundamentally Wrong?’
Gonzales: ‘What Is It That I Did That Is So Fundamentally Wrong?’
Alberto Gonzales’s legal career at the White House and the Justice Department was a stain even for the Bush administration. Gonzales left office with a 28 percent approval rating, with over 40 percent of the country saying he should resign.
Yet, Gonzales is puzzled to this day why the public frowns upon his tenure in government. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Gonzales asks, “What is it that I did that is so fundamentally wrong, that deserves this kind of response to my service?” He added, “For some reason, I am portrayed as the one who is evil in formulating policies that people disagree with. I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror.”
Fortunately, we can offer Gonzales some help in figuring out what he did that was so “fundamentally wrong.” Some lowlights:
Politicized the DOJ: – Gonzales approved the firing and hiring of federal prosecutors for political reasons and lied to Congress about the scandal.
Approved torture: In 2002, Gonzales “raised no objections and, without consulting military and State Department experts in the laws of torture and war,” approved an infamous August 2002 memo giving CIA interrogators “legal blessings.” Gonzales witnessed an interrogation at Gitmo in 2002 and approved of “whatever needs to be done” to detainees.
Lied about warrantless wiretapping: Gonzaled lied to Congress multiple times about the Bush administration’s illegal wiretapping program, saying there wasn’t “any serious disagreement” about the program (there was).
Distorted pre-war intelligence: Last month, the House Oversight Committee revealed evidence showing that Gonzales lied to Congress in 2004 by claiming that the CIA “orally” approved Bush’s claim that Iraq sought uranium from Africa.
Furthermore, it appears Gonzales’s lying streak isn’t over. Gonzales told the WSJ that he didn’t play a central role in drafting the opinions allowing the CIA to use harsh interrogations. “John Yoo had strong views. No one could make him do anything he didn’t want to do,” he said. Gonzales also said he did not lie to Congress about the illegal surveillance program.
Gonzales also bizarrely claimed that he “found [John] Ashcroft as lucid as I’ve seen him at meetings in the White House,” referring to the infamous strong-arming of Ashcroft at his sickbed in 2002 in order to get approval of the illegal wiretapping program. In reality, Ashcroft had a severe case of gallstone pancreatitis and was a “very sick man,” according to then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey.
Since his resignation, Gonzales has still been unable to find work. “Any law firm that does due diligence on me sees all the investigations and the possibility that I might be indicted and they say, ‘Not right now,’” he said.
Gonzales’s bewilderment is similar to that of Vice President Cheney, who recently said he doesn’t have “any idea” why he has such low approval ratings.
Cheney biographer: VP’s view of presidential power is ‘more radical’ than Nixon’s.
Cheney biographer: VP’s view of presidential power is ‘more radical’ than Nixon’s.
On Sunday, Vice President Cheney made the astounding claim that if the President does anything during wartime to protect the country, it is legal — echoing Richard Nixon. Yesterday, Cheney biographer Barton Gellman told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that Cheney’s claim is actually “more radical” than Nixon’s because Cheney said it while serving in office:
It’s actually I think more radical than what Nixon said, because Nixon never enunciated that as policy during his administration and neither did his Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department. And this administration, they did. Cheney was asked, doesn’t Congress have any say here? He said, Congress can pass statutes, but he said, we don’t have to obey them — we don’t need no stinkin’ statutes.
Watch it:
Gellman also disputed Cheney’s claim that members of Congress who were briefed on Bush’s illegal surveillance program wholeheartedly endorsed it. “Now, I talked to four people who were in that meeting…and all of them dispute that that’s the way it happened,” he said.
Bush’s former deputy attorney general: ‘Eric Holder should be confirmed.’
Bush’s former deputy attorney general: ‘Eric Holder should be confirmed.’
Recently, conservatives have been rallying behind Karl Rove’s call to obstruct Attorney General nominee Eric Holder’s confirmation hearings, citing the 2001 pardon of Marc Rich. Today, former deputy attorney general Jim Comey, who famously clashed with the Bush administration on illegal wiretapping, endorsed Holder, saying he will ensure that the DOJ is free from political influence:
I know a lot of good people who have made significant mistakes. I think Mr. Holder’s may actually make him a better steward of the Department of Justice because he has learned a hard lesson about protecting the integrity of that great institution from political fixers. I’m not suggesting errors of judgment are qualification for high office, but in this case, where the nominee is a smart, decent, humble man, who knows and loves the Department and has demonstrated his commitment to the rule of law across an entire career, the error should not disqualify him. Eric Holder should be confirmed as Attorney General.
Cheney: We Asked If We Needed Approval For Wiretapping, Congress Told Us ‘Absolutely Not’
Cheney: We Asked If We Needed Approval For Wiretapping, Congress Told Us ‘Absolutely Not’
In an interview with Fox News’s Chris Wallace yesterday morning, Vice President Cheney defended the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, and claimed that the congressional leaders briefed on the program wholeheartedly approved. In fact, Cheney claimed, when the White House asked if it needed congressional approval for the program, they unanimously agreed it did not:
CHENEY: We briefed them on the program and what we’d achieved and how it worked and asked them should we continue the program. They were unanimous, Republican and Democrat alike. All agreed: Absolutely essential to continue the program. I then said, Do we need to come to the Congress and get additional legislating authorization to continue what we’re doing? They said absolutely not. Don’t do it.
Watch it:
Cheney’s startling claims run directly counter to accounts by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV). Rather than asking for congressional input, Pelosi and Rockefeller said in 2005 that Cheney simply informed them of what was going on — and ignored their objections:
PELOSI: The Bush Administration considered these briefings to be notification, not a request for approval. As is my practice whenever I am notified about such intelligence activities, I expressed my strong concerns during these briefings.
ROCKEFELLER: The record needs to be set clear that the Administration never afforded members briefed on the program an opportunity to either approve or disapprove the NSA program.
Other congressional members who attended those briefings have said that they were told only the barest outlines of the program. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Jane Harman (D-CA) said that the White House never disclosed that it was skirting the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to eavesdrop on Americans without warrants. Former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL) said the same thing:
The assumption was that if we did that, we would do it pursuant to the law, the law that regulates the surveillance of national security issues. And there was no suggestion that we were going to begin eavesdropping on United States citizens without following the full law. … There was no reference made to the fact that we were going to use that as the subterfuge to begin unwarranted, illegal — and I think unconstitutional — eavesdropping on American citizens.
What’s more, Rockefeller, then vice-chairman of the Intelligence Committee, wrote a hand-written letter to Cheney in 2003 to “reiterate [his] concerns” about the wiretapping program. “I feel unable to fully evaluate, much less endorse these activities,” he wrote.
Cheney claims to have suggested seeking congressional approval right away. However, the White House put up a stiff fight just a few years later, when Congress finally sought to impose oversight of the wiretapping program. The Vice President has already presented misleading information about the dates and frequency of these supposed briefings; now he appears to be offering misleading descriptions of them.
Newsweek confirms massive data mining effort triggered warrantless wiretapping showdown.
Newsweek confirms massive data mining effort triggered warrantless wiretapping showdown.
Newsweek reported over the weekend that “two knowledgeable sources” confirmed that the 2004 clash between the White House and the Justice Department over the NSA’s warrantless surveillance program was triggered by the NSA’s “vast and indiscriminate collection of communications data“:
These sources…describe a system in which the National Security Agency, with cooperation from some of the country’s largest telecommunications companies, was able to vacuum up the records of calls and e-mails of tens of millions of average Americans between September 2001 and March 2004. [...]
The NSA’s powerful computers became vast storehouses of “metadata.” They collected the telephone numbers of callers and recipients in the United States, and the time and duration of the calls. They also collected and stored the subject lines of e-mails, the times they were sent, and the addresses of both senders and recipients. … All this metadata was then sifted by the NSA, using complex algorithms to detect patterns and links that might indicate terrorist activity.
The Justice Department concluded, over White House objections, that the data mining operation constituted “electronic surveillance” and as such was in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Ultimately, the disagreement led to the now infamous confrontation at Attorney General John Ashcroft’s hospital bedside.
DOJ blocking Obama transition team from reviewing documents on wiretapping and torture.
DOJ blocking Obama transition team from reviewing documents on wiretapping and torture.
According to the Blog of Legal Times, the Justice Department is blocking President-elect Obama’s agency review team’s request “to review classified legal opinions related to secret CIA and National Security Agency programs.” Included in these documents are the “legal rationale of the NSA’s warrantless spying program and the CIA’s detention and interrogation policies, among other intelligence initiatives.” According to a senior Justice Department official, they are “reluctant to provide the opinions to Obama’s team without permission from the two intelligence agencies whose activities they address.” (HT: Daily Kos and Talk Left)
Feingold: Obama Should ‘Renounce The Extreme Claims Of Executive Power’ In Inaugural Address
Feingold: Obama Should ‘Renounce The Extreme Claims Of Executive Power’ In Inaugural Address
During an interview last Friday on PBS with Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) host Bill Moyers asked Feingold what he wanted from the upcoming Obama administration. “I would like the new president to do exactly what he said he’s going to do,” Feingold said, such as bringing the country together, ending the Iraq war and closing Guantanamo.
Feingold also told Moyers that in his inaugural address, Obama should “renounce the extreme claims of executive power”:
FEINGOLD: Well, of course, the new president, minutes after he’s sworn in, in this wonderful moment — it will be cold out there. It will be short speech. But included in the speech, I would hope, would be some attempt by this new, wonderful president to renounce the extreme claims of executive power. To simply renounce these claims that were made by the Bush administration.
Watch it:
Indeed, since his election as president, Obama has reiterated his promises to close Guantanamo and end the Iraq war. But in a Daily Kos diary published one day after his interview with Moyers, Feingold expounded on why Obama needs to the condemn Bush’s abuses of executive power as soon as he takes office:
[F]ailing to act swiftly to reverse the damage could essentially legitimize that conduct and the extreme legal theories on which it was based. That is why it is critically important for President-elect Obama to unequivocally renounce President Bush’s extreme claims of executive authority. As I mentioned in the interview yesterday, stating this position clearly in the inaugural address would affirm to the nation, and the world, that respect for the rule of law has returned to the Oval Office.
In a speech on the Senate floor last September, Feingold outlined a series of expert recommendations “on what should be done to restore the rule of law” that focus on four key areas: “[T]he separation of powers among the branches, government secrecy, detention and interrogation policy, and protecting the privacy of law-abiding Americans.”
“I am hopeful that with the election of Barack Obama, the assault on our Constitution will end,” Feingold said.
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