Brekend Nieuws | Forum | Brits Nieuws | Het Nieuws van de V.S. | Het Nieuws van de wereld | Politiek Nieuws | Nieuws sc.i-technologie | Het Nieuws van de oorlog & van het Terrorisme | Het Nieuws van sporten | Multimedia | Vastgestelde Homepage

Vertaal:

Woensdag, 17 September, 2008

Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com | Voor de tweede opeenvolgende dag, De Washington Post heeft gepubliceerd een uittreksel van verslaggever Barton Gellman nieuw boek op het Voorzitterschap van de Ondeugd Cheney, en het verstrekt nog meer details op de intense confrontatie in Maart, 2004 tussen de Afdeling van de Rechtvaardigheid van Bush en het cheney-Geleide Witte Huis over de weigering van DOJ om de wettigheid van de binnenlandse het spioneren van NSA te verklaren activiteiten. Zoals sinsdien het is geweten Procureur Algemene James Comey van de afgevaardigde getuigde vóór de Senaat in Mei, 2007, vertelden alle top-level ambtenaren DOJ - met inbegrip van Procureur Algemene John Ashcroft, Comey en FBI Directeur Robert Mueller - President Bush dat zij onmiddellijk omdat Bush zou aftreden gaf opdracht tot het Nsa- toezichtprogramma verder te gaan zelfs nadat zijn eigen Afdeling van de Rechtvaardigheid hem het was duidelijk onwettig vertelde. Comey stelde zijn berustingsbrief op, roepend het spioneren van Bush activiteiten een „apocalyptische situatie“ omdat hij „om een deel van iets was gevraagd te zijn die fundamenteel verkeerd.“ is

Zulk een in massa de berusting in het midden van een verkiezingsjaar werd voorkomen slechts toen Bush definitief overeenkwam om bepaalde aspecten van het toezichtprogramma te veranderen om deze ambtenaren te overreden DOJ om zijn wettigheid te onderschrijven. Het onwettige Het spioneren langs geopenbaarde programma De New York Times in December, was 2005 dat zo tot veel politieke controverse leidde - waardoor het beleid van Bush op Amerikanen zonder de waarborgen spioneerde die door wet worden vereist - een programma dat eigenlijk was onderschreven en gemachtigd door deze zelfde ambtenaren DOJ. Het programma dat wij ongeveer was het „compromis“ programma hebben geleerd dat Bush in 2004 ten uitvoer legde om hun berusting te vermijden. Zo uiterste - welke rechts, uitvoerend-macht-houdend van ideologues - deze ambtenaren DOJ zijn: zij zijn degenen die machtigden en het onwettige Nsa- programma onderschreven dat wij kwamen ongeveer leren.

Maar wat het was dat het beleid van Bush in het spioneren op Amerikanen deed jarenlang voorafgaand aan Maart, 2004 was zo extreem, zo duidelijk onwettig, zo unconscionable dat zelfs deze rechtse aangestelden van DOJ Bush, die goedgekeurd het uiteindelijke warrantless het afluisteren programma, waren klaar af te treden in massa als die het spioneren activiteiten verdergingen. Hier is hoe Gellman, in zijn boek, Maart beschrijft, 2004 „compromis“ die in het „minder onwettige“ en minder extreme Het spioneren programma resulteerde dat de ambtenaren DOJ goedkeurden:

De FBI directeur was niet meer handelbaar dan Comey. This was a rule-of-law question, he told the president, and the answer was in the Justice Department. The FBI could not participate in operations that Justice held to be in breach of criminal law. If those were [the President's] orders, he would respectfully take his leave. . . . 

Seven days later, Bush amended his March 11 directive. The legal certification belonged again to the attorney general. The surveillance program stopped doing some things, and it did other things differently. Much of the operation remained in place. Not all of it.

Think about that: in order to persuade the DOJ officials not to resign, “the surveillance program stopped doing some things, and it did other things differently.” What “things” did the NSA stop doing in March, 2004 — and what “things” did it start doing differently — in order to convince Ashcroft, Mueller and Comey to remain in their jobs? This is one of the greatest political scandals of the Bush era — not merely the commission of these illegal acts but the fact that they remain concealed from the public– and it’s also one of the most illustrative episodes of how our Government now works, of the extreme secrecy and illegality that characterizes it at its core, and of the complicity of both parties in all of this.

We know (even according to Bush’s own right-wing, highest-level DOJ officials) that, for years, the Government was violating the criminal law (i.e., committing felonies) in how it spied on us, and did so in ways that were so severe that even the President’s own appointees — who proved they were willing to endorse plainly illegal spying programs — were nonetheless ready to destroy the President’s 2004 re-election bid by resigning if those activities continued. At least according to what the Government claims, these illegal activities — what Gellman cryptically calls “these things” — stopped in March, 2004, when Bush ordered the program changed in order to satisfy the DOJ. Thus, what possible rationale exists for continuing to conceal from the country the extreme lawbreaking in which our Government was engaged during this time — more than four years ago?

Of course, we almost certainly would have learned the answers to these questions — or, at the very least, obtained a judicial ruling that the Government broke the law — had the telecom lawsuits been allowed to proceed. But thanks to the Congressional leadership of both parties, with the support of both major presidential candidates (though over the opposition of the Democratic Vice Presidential nominee), those lawsuits were killed, stopped in their tracks, when the telecom industry was retroactively immunized for their lawbreaking.

At this point, it is extremely easy to understand why not only the White House and Congressional Republicans, but also the Democratic leadership, was so eager to ensure that this law-breaking remain concealed from the public and that there are never any consequences for it. It’s because, as is true for so much of the Bush radicalism and lawbreaking over the years, top Democrats were fully aware of what was taking place and either explicitly endorsed the lawbreaking or, with full complicity, allowed it to continue. In his book, Gellman details a March 10, 2004 meeting convened by Dick Cheney regarding the DOJ’s objections to the NSA surveillance programs — in which various Bush national security officials were present along with “the four ranking members of the House and the Senate, and the chairmen and vice chairmen of the intelligence committees” — and this is what Gellman writes:

With a nod from Cheney, [then-NSA Director Gen. Michael Hayden] walked through the program’s vital mission. Gonzales said top lawyers at the NSA and Justice had green-lighted the program from the beginning. Now Attorney General John D. Ashcroft was in the hospital, and James B. Comey, Ashcroft’s deputy, refused to certify that the surveillance was legal. 

That was misleading at best. Cheney and Gonzales knew that Comey spoke for Ashcroft as well. They also knew, but chose not to mention, that Jack L. Goldsmith, chief of the Office of Legal Counsel at Justice, had been warning of major legal problems for months.

More than three years later, Gonzales would testify that there was “consensus in the room” from the lawmakers, “who said, ‘Despite the recommendation of the deputy attorney general, go forward with these very important intelligence activities.’” By this account — disputed by participants from both parties — four Democrats and four Republicans counseled Cheney to press on with a program that Justice called illegal.

In fact, Cheney asked the lawmakers a question that came close to answering itself. Could the House and Senate amend surveillance laws without raising suspicions that a new program had been launched? The obvious reply became a new rationale for keeping Congress out.

Though there is dispute about whether these members of Congress expressly endorsed the continuation of the illegal program, there is no dispute that the meeting took place and that these members were repeatedly briefed on the spying program — not only after 2004, but before 2004. This specific meeting described by Gellman, and the briefings generally, included Nancy Pelosi, Jane Harman, Steney Hoyer, and Jay Rockefeller — all of whom voted to put an end to the telecom lawsuits (and thereby ensure that these crimes remain concealed), and the latter two of whom were, far and away, the key forces behind the new law that killed the lawsuits looking into these spying activities (and then joined Bush and Cheney at a festive, bipartisan White House signing ceremony to celebrate their joint victory).

If we had an even minimally transparent and open government, or an even theoretically extant opposition party, it would be unthinkable that these crimes would remain concealed, uninvestigated and unpunished. Instead, we have deeply corrupt and complicit leadership in both parties that act in unison to protect the culpable actors (i.e., themselves), while neither reporters nor citizens seem particularly interested in learning about the illegal “things” our Government did for years in spying on us and our communications. Did they listen in on our exclusively domestic calls, read our emails, do physical searches by breaking into our homes all without warrants, engage in other types of equally intrusive and illegal surveillance?

As former DOJ official Marty Lederman wrote last year in the wake of the Comey revelations — after detailing how extraordinary were these threats to resign from these right-wing DOJ officials — in a post entitled: “Can You Even Imagine How Bad it Must Have Been?”:

If that’s the narrow version of the NSA program, just how broad and indiscriminate was the surveillance under the program that Ashcroft, et al. would not approve? . . . This is the real heart of the Comey story — What happened between September 2001 and October 2003, before Comey and Goldmsith came aboard? Just how radical were the Administration’s legal judgments? How extreme were the programs they implemented? How egregious was the lawbreaking? 

We still have no idea, and we (meaning our political and media class) don’t seem to care all that much. We know the President committed felonies by engaging in activities which his own ideologically-sympathetic DOJ officials declared were violative of the criminal law. We know this went on for years, and that he stopped only when it became clear that his political career would be destroyed by massive DOJ resignations if he continued. But we are content not to know what he did, what the extent of the lawbreaking was, and what was done with the criminally-obtained information about U.S. citizens.

Have Your Say: What illegal “things” was the government doing in 2001-2004?
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report here.

RSS TrackBack URL

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website

Related News

• No Dissent on Spying, Says Justice Dept.
• White House Pushed Ashcroft on Wiretaps
• Cheney Punished Justice Official Who Questioned Domestic Spying
• Groups File Legal Papers Renewing Call For Release of NSA Wiretap Records
• Report: White House says spying broader than previously admitted

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 17th, 2008 at 6:23 pm and is filed under Breaking News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Loading ...

ADVERTISEMENTS

SITE MAPS

7/7 Afghanistan Alternative-Energy Art Barack Obama BBC Big-Brother Bilderberg Biometrics Bush Censorship CIA Climate-Change Cover-Up Cults Culture Database-State David-Hicks David-Ray-Griffin Debt Democrats Demos Drugs Education Entertainment Environmental News EU False-Flag FBI Fraud Free-Speech Freemasons G8 Globalization Guantanamo Health-News History ID-Cards Internet Iran Iraq Israel John McCain Law Marches Media News MI5 MI6 Microsoft Military MoD Money Music NASA Neocons New World Order NSA Oil Pakistan Podcast Police-State Propaganda RFID RINF Rumsfeld Science Science & Technology News Secrecy Security Slavery Space Sports Spy Spying Stephen-Lendman Technology Terrorism Tony-Blair Torture TV UK-News UN USA- USA-News Video Voting war War & Terrorism News Warfare White-House Wolfowitz World-News Yahoo
2003 - 2005 Archives | 2005 - 2007 Archives | 2007 - 2008 Archives | Current Archives | Past Version