The political establishment and telecom immunity -- why it matters
Saturday July 5, 2008 09:29 EDT
Glenn Greenwald

Nancy Soderberg was deputy national security advisor and an ambassador to the United Nations in the Clinton administration. Today, she has an Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Times defending the FISA bill and telecom amnesty. The entire Op-Ed is just a regurgitation of the same trite, vague talking points which the political elite are using to justify this bill, accompanied by the standard invocations of "National Security" which our Foreign Policy elite condescendingly toss around to justify whatever policy they're claiming is necessary to protect us. But it's the language that she uses -- and the brazenness of the lying (and that's what it is) to justify this bill -- that's notable here.

It's notable because the political establishment is not only about to pass a patently corrupt bill, but worse, are spouting -- on a very bipartisan basis -- completely deceitful claims to obscure what they're really doing. This is what Soderberg says is what happened:

The Senate is dragging its feet because the compromise bill's opponents -- mostly Democrats -- want also to punish the telecommunications companies that answered President Bush's order for help with his illegal, warrantless wiretapping program. That is the wrong target.

Cellphone Tracking Powers on Request - Secret Warrants Granted Without Probable Cause By Ellen Nakashima Friday, November 23, 2007; A01

Federal officials are routinely asking courts to order cellphone companies to furnish real-time tracking data so they can pinpoint the whereabouts of drug traffickers, fugitives and other criminal suspects, according to judges and industry lawyers.

In some cases, judges have granted the requests without requiring the government to demonstrate that there is probable cause to believe that a crime is taking place or that the inquiry will yield evidence of a crime. Privacy advocates fear such a practice may expose average Americans to a new level of government scrutiny of their daily lives.

Justice Dept. Reopens Surveillance Probe By Dan Eggen Wednesday, November 14, 2007

The Justice Department said yesterday that it has reopened an internal investigation of the role played by its lawyers in the administration's warrantless surveillance program, marking a notable policy shift just days into the tenure of new Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey.

The investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility was abandoned in July 2006 after President Bush refused to give security clearances to the OPR lawyers conducting the investigation, according to documents and congressional testimony...

(11/14/2007 ) Domestic spying inquiry restarted at DoJ

The Justice Department has reopened a long-dormant inquiry into the government's warrantless wiretapping program.

Major Policy Shift
It is a major policy shift only days into the tenure of Attorney General Michael Mukasey.

The investigation by the department's Office of Professional Responsibility was shut down last year, after the investigators were denied security clearances.

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told Congress that President Bush, not he, denied the clearances...

Elliot D. Cohen: Senate Judiciary Poised to Pass Total Information Awareness Bill Mon, 2007-11-12 A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION by Elliot D. Cohen
Amid public outcry, in 2003, Congress defunded the Bush Administration's Total Information Awareness (TIA) project, a massive Orwellian technology-driven surveillance and data mining initiative. Now, it is attempting to pass through the FISA Amendments Act of 2007 (S. 2248), a bill that would affectively give legal standing and retroactive legal immunity to a major component of this project...

Ain't this a BUNCH of TOTAL BS?

U.S. official: Privacy must be redefined - Residents need to adjust to loss of anonymity, government leader says updated 7:41 p.m. ET, Sun., Nov. 11, 2007
WASHINGTON - As Congress debates new rules for government eavesdropping, a top intelligence official says it is time that people in the United States changed their definition of privacy.

Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people’s private communications and financial information.

Kerr’s comments come as Congress is taking a second look at the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act...

Help Us Run the "Congress as Sheep" Ads
Ever since a new Congress got elected last November, we’ve been waiting for it to end the violations of the Constitution and the lawless behavior of the Bush administration. Members of Congress acted, but instead of restoring our freedoms, they actually handed the Bush administration vast new powers to invade our privacy with no meaningful oversight from the courts or Congress...

Bush Signs Law to Widen Legal Reach for Wiretapping By JAMES RISEN Published: August 6, 2007
WASHINGTON, Aug. 5 — President Bush signed into law on Sunday legislation that broadly expanded the government’s authority to eavesdrop on the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of American citizens without warrants.

Congressional aides and others familiar with the details of the law said that its impact went far beyond the small fixes that administration officials had said were needed to gather information about foreign terrorists. They said seemingly subtle changes in legislative language would sharply alter the legal limits on the government’s ability to monitor millions of phone calls and e-mail messages going in and out of the United States.

They also said that the new law for the first time provided a legal framework for much of the surveillance without warrants that was being conducted in secret by the National Security Agency and outside the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that is supposed to regulate the way the government can listen to the private communications of American citizens...

Dems Seek Gonzales Impeachment - Republican Congressman Calls the Move 'Misuse of Congressional Power' By JASON RYAN and THERESA COOK July 31, 2007 —
Days before Congress is set to adjourn for its August recess, a group of Democrats on Capitol Hill is seeking an impeachment resolution against embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

On Tuesday, Rep. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., sought to introduce the legislation urging the House Judiciary Committee to "investigate fully whether sufficient grounds exist for the House of Representatives to impeach Alberto R. Gonzales, attorney general of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors."...

Mr. Gonzales's Never-Ending Story
NYT Op-Ed 07-29-07
pResident Bush often insists he has to be the decider - ignoring Congress and the public when it comes to the tough matters on war, terrorism and torture, even deciding whether an ordinary man in Florida should be allowed to let his wife die with dignity. Apparently that burden does not apply to the functioning of one of the most vital government agencies, the Justice Department.

Americans have been waiting months for Mr. Bush to fire Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who long ago proved that he was incompetent and more recently has proved that he can't tell the truth. Mr. Bush refused to fire him after it was clear Mr. Gonzales lied about his role in the political purge of nine federal prosecutors. And he is still refusing to do so - even after testimony by the F.B.I. director, Robert Mueller, that suggests that Mr. Gonzales either lied to Congress about Mr. Bush's warrantless wiretapping operation or at the very least twisted the truth so badly that it amounts to the same thing...

Senate Democrats seek special prosecutor probe on Gonzales perjury by Michael Roston Published: Thursday July 26, 2007
Four Senate Democrats called on the Justice Department's Solicitor General to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate whether or not Attorney General Alberto Gonzales committed perjury in Congressional testimony on the Bush administration's domestic spying program.

Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) harshly criticized the Attorney General in the Thursday Capitol Hill press conference.

"His inability to answer simple and straight forward questions was just stunning," Schumer said. "His instinct is not to tell the truth, but to dissemble and deceive."..

Analysis: Gonzales Testimony Part of Broader Effort to Conceal Surveillance Program By Spencer Ackerman and Paul Kiel - July 26, 2007, 6:54 PM
Alberto Gonzales' testimony that there was "no serious disagreement" within the Bush Administration about the NSA warrantless surveillance program has left senators sputtering and fulminating about the attorney general's apparent prevarications. But a closer examination of Gonzales' testimony and other public statements from the Administration suggest that there may be a method to the madness....

FBI director appears to contradict Gonzales' testimony
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- FBI Director Robert Mueller told Congress Thursday that the confrontation between then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft in Ashcroft's hospital room in 2004 concerned a controversial surveillance program -- an apparent contradiction of Senate testimony given Tuesday by Gonzales.

Mueller said he spoke with Ashcroft soon after Gonzales left the hospital and was told the meeting dealt with "an NSA [National Security Agency] program that has been much discussed, yes."...

Welocme to FascismUSA! The old Catch-22, eh? Plaintiffs can't proceed because they can't prove harm done by the "SECRET" spying....

Court throws out spying lawsuit - 3-judge panel splits along party lines over Bush’s surveillance program Updated: July 6, 2007
CINCINNATI - A divided federal appeals court rejected a lawsuit Friday challenging President Bush’s domestic spying program without ruling on the issue of whether warrantless wiretapping is legal.

In a 2-1 decision with Republican-appointed judges in the majority, a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the plaintiffs had no standing to sue because they couldn’t prove their communications had been monitored by the government....

'Bout time! Let the subpoenas fly...

Senate Judiciary Committee Issues Subpoenas For Legal Basis Of Bush Administration’s Domestic Surveillance Program
WASHINGTON (Wednesday, June 27) – Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), in consultation with Ranking Member Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), issued subpoenas Wednesday for documents relating to the authorization and legal justification for the Administration's warrantless wiretapping program.