Thursday, July 16, 2009
When will Congress hold politicians accountable?
On Friday there was a release of a Federal Report on the President's Surveillance Program...
http://documents.nytimes.com/federal-report-on-the-president-s-surveillance-program#p=1
And in that report five different independent Inspector General's highlighted the results of the program which was limited even at best judgment of the program...
http://www.mercurynews.com/politics/ci_12813785
But that was not all. Also in that report where a few key revelations. One of them was that the CIA was running a program that no one had told or briefed Congress about. Even more disturbing the CIA was directed by Dick Cheney to not tell of all people...the CIA director about the program...
The program in particular which details are now coming more into the light, was something the Seymour Hersh had been reporting on and mentioned last year:..
http://www.minnpost.com/ericblackblog/2009/03/11/7310/investigative_reporter_seymour_hersh_describes_executive_assassination_ring
A program authorizing the CIA to assassinate suspected Al Qaeda leaders...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124736381913627661.html
There are several things about this that is disturbing. For one we know that Vice President Cheney's actions are in direct violation with the law. In particular the National Security Act of 1947...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Act_of_1947
But more disturbing to me is how the programs were implemented by Cheney and the Executive branch. And this is something you have to be critical about whether our leaders are Democrat or Republican. This goes beyond party lines. The process of the National Security architecture was comprised over and over again.
In the past year I have read five different books that focused on policy for the Bush administration. And in all five of those books a pattern emerged and the pattern was the same. Time after time, over and over again.
The pattern would go like this. Dick Cheney would want to put a program in place because President Bush handed him supervision of the National Security Portfolio. So David Addington...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Addington
...who was Dick Cheney's lawyer would supervise the writing of a particular policy. He would have John Yoo the disgraced lawyer from the OLC (Office of Legal Counsel) write a law as a memorandum of understanding...
http://www.usdoj.gov/olc/
Now Addington with the law written would go around in the White House to only select people who he knew would not give him an argument and who he could be sure were on board for whatever program he wanted to implement. After he got as many of them to OK it he would hand the document back to Cheney who had private lunches with Bush several times a week. Cheney would then have Bush sign the document in question and then Cheney would have Addington circulate it for group consumption.
This hands on approach violated several methods of process and checks and balances within the White House. This is why Colin Powell would often get outflanked on policy and he lost his voice. Cheney would go around even the President's own staff, get approval for something and then run with the program. But here's the funny part. David Addington was not in the employee of the intelligence community. Many of these policies once announced brought up furious argument but only when people heard about it...i.e. after Bush signed the policy. Addington would use Bush's signature on a memo then as leverage telling people to shut up and fall in line.
But this started to backfire after John Yoo left the OLC. When he did the man who succeeded after him was a very conservative lawyer named Jack Goldsmith...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Goldsmith
And Jack Goldsmith had a quality that Cheney and Addington had not seen before...he actually wanted to do what his job said and write opinions that followed a strange entity that Cheney had not paid attention to. Something called the Constitution.
Now Addington tried to bully Goldsmith around but Goldsmith held his ground and demanded more information. As he learned more about these programs and as he started to brief his own boss, John Ashcroft the Attorney General, he discovered that not even the attorney general had been briefed on these programs.
So let's review. Addington with Yoo were writing policies and laws for programs that were kept so secretive that even the highest ranking law officer in the country...who was supposed to certify that the programs were lawful was kept in the dark.
This is what eventually led to a huge showdown over one of these programs and its legality. And it's important to know what this program was about because the program's existence alone undermines everything that we know and appreciate in the Bill of Rights. The program in question that was written by Addington was a program that involved datamining and in particular the NSA (National Security Agency)...
http://www.nsa.gov/
The core of the program was something that we believe has been abandoned which collected and kept data on a massive scale. It looked for keywords throughout email and the internet. And if anything your IP address wrote matched the keywords it was looking for it would pull every email you ever wrote, any request you ever put through a search engine and would archive it. This was done without warrants, without any due process and more importantly Congress was kept in the dark about many of the details of this program.
In fact if you read Barton Gellmen's book 'Angler', which won the pulitzer prize for nonfiction, he cites multiple officials who quoted the director of the NSA (Michael Hayden) as knowing that these programs were illegal. He joked with a group of colleagues right before the 2004 election telling them, "I'm glad that I will have some people next to me when we all sit at a White table and testify to explain all this stuff to President John Kerry."
That to me is a remarkable admission. The head of the NSA joking with people knowing that programs he was running were against the law. Say What?!?
Now the Department of Justice rebeled against this program as well. In the remarkable testimony given by James Comey Assistant Attorney general...
...which was confirmed by the Federal report, President Bush sent two of his goons...that would be White House Chief of staff Andrew Card and former disgraced Attorney General Roberto Gonzales to John Ashcroft's hospital bedside to try to get him to sign and reauthorize a program even though he was in an ICU bed in critical condition...
Now as both Angler and David Sanger's book 'The Inheritance' flesh out James Comey and John Ashcroft were prepared to resign over this program. But even I did not know the depth of how far the lawyers who found this program illegal were ready to go. When James Comey went to talk to the President about this program, which the President wanted and James Comey as the acting Attorney General objected to Comey was prepared to resign. But he was not the only one. Every deputy working for George Tenet under the CIA, The FBI Director, Every Deputy working for the FBI Director and every single Department head and Deputy Attorney General at Justice were ready to and were going to resign over this program and its illegality.
That move if triggered would have effectively decapitated the government. And the amazing thing is barely anyone knew. These were over 40 of the most arch conservative Federalist society certified lawyers in the country. Almost all of them Bush appointees. And because of this disconnect where Bush let Cheney just 'handle it' and he was not in the loop for what was happening...Bush had no idea about this revolt until it was on his doorstep.
Now on the Sunday talk shows we saw a very strange reaction from the Republican party. John McCain with a smile saying this was the 'tip of the iceberg' had a flair for understatement. Jon Kyl on This Week was practically a blithering idiot in his response...
And Peter King who sits on the Intelligence Committee has called strangely for a 'scorched Earth policy'...
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/13/gop-hits-pursuit-of-torture-probe/
What the hell is wrong with these people? You know I didn't want to look at the past, just let history judge the Bush administration as it was. But this is entering ridiculous territory though now. How big does a crime have to be before Congress holds anyone in Washington accountable? If Obama was pulling this crap I would argue for his impeachment. I know he should already be called on the carpet because he is still doing CIA Rendition. But if you don't investigate crimes that are happening right before your eyes just because you think it will be politically inconvenient doesn't that make you an accomplice to the crimes?
http://documents.nytimes.com/federal-report-on-the-president-s-surveillance-program#p=1
And in that report five different independent Inspector General's highlighted the results of the program which was limited even at best judgment of the program...
http://www.mercurynews.com/politics/ci_12813785
But that was not all. Also in that report where a few key revelations. One of them was that the CIA was running a program that no one had told or briefed Congress about. Even more disturbing the CIA was directed by Dick Cheney to not tell of all people...the CIA director about the program...
The program in particular which details are now coming more into the light, was something the Seymour Hersh had been reporting on and mentioned last year:..
http://www.minnpost.com/ericblackblog/2009/03/11/7310/investigative_reporter_seymour_hersh_describes_executive_assassination_ring
A program authorizing the CIA to assassinate suspected Al Qaeda leaders...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124736381913627661.html
There are several things about this that is disturbing. For one we know that Vice President Cheney's actions are in direct violation with the law. In particular the National Security Act of 1947...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Security_Act_of_1947
But more disturbing to me is how the programs were implemented by Cheney and the Executive branch. And this is something you have to be critical about whether our leaders are Democrat or Republican. This goes beyond party lines. The process of the National Security architecture was comprised over and over again.
In the past year I have read five different books that focused on policy for the Bush administration. And in all five of those books a pattern emerged and the pattern was the same. Time after time, over and over again.
The pattern would go like this. Dick Cheney would want to put a program in place because President Bush handed him supervision of the National Security Portfolio. So David Addington...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Addington
...who was Dick Cheney's lawyer would supervise the writing of a particular policy. He would have John Yoo the disgraced lawyer from the OLC (Office of Legal Counsel) write a law as a memorandum of understanding...
http://www.usdoj.gov/olc/
Now Addington with the law written would go around in the White House to only select people who he knew would not give him an argument and who he could be sure were on board for whatever program he wanted to implement. After he got as many of them to OK it he would hand the document back to Cheney who had private lunches with Bush several times a week. Cheney would then have Bush sign the document in question and then Cheney would have Addington circulate it for group consumption.
This hands on approach violated several methods of process and checks and balances within the White House. This is why Colin Powell would often get outflanked on policy and he lost his voice. Cheney would go around even the President's own staff, get approval for something and then run with the program. But here's the funny part. David Addington was not in the employee of the intelligence community. Many of these policies once announced brought up furious argument but only when people heard about it...i.e. after Bush signed the policy. Addington would use Bush's signature on a memo then as leverage telling people to shut up and fall in line.
But this started to backfire after John Yoo left the OLC. When he did the man who succeeded after him was a very conservative lawyer named Jack Goldsmith...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Goldsmith
And Jack Goldsmith had a quality that Cheney and Addington had not seen before...he actually wanted to do what his job said and write opinions that followed a strange entity that Cheney had not paid attention to. Something called the Constitution.
Now Addington tried to bully Goldsmith around but Goldsmith held his ground and demanded more information. As he learned more about these programs and as he started to brief his own boss, John Ashcroft the Attorney General, he discovered that not even the attorney general had been briefed on these programs.
So let's review. Addington with Yoo were writing policies and laws for programs that were kept so secretive that even the highest ranking law officer in the country...who was supposed to certify that the programs were lawful was kept in the dark.
This is what eventually led to a huge showdown over one of these programs and its legality. And it's important to know what this program was about because the program's existence alone undermines everything that we know and appreciate in the Bill of Rights. The program in question that was written by Addington was a program that involved datamining and in particular the NSA (National Security Agency)...
http://www.nsa.gov/
The core of the program was something that we believe has been abandoned which collected and kept data on a massive scale. It looked for keywords throughout email and the internet. And if anything your IP address wrote matched the keywords it was looking for it would pull every email you ever wrote, any request you ever put through a search engine and would archive it. This was done without warrants, without any due process and more importantly Congress was kept in the dark about many of the details of this program.
In fact if you read Barton Gellmen's book 'Angler', which won the pulitzer prize for nonfiction, he cites multiple officials who quoted the director of the NSA (Michael Hayden) as knowing that these programs were illegal. He joked with a group of colleagues right before the 2004 election telling them, "I'm glad that I will have some people next to me when we all sit at a White table and testify to explain all this stuff to President John Kerry."
That to me is a remarkable admission. The head of the NSA joking with people knowing that programs he was running were against the law. Say What?!?
Now the Department of Justice rebeled against this program as well. In the remarkable testimony given by James Comey Assistant Attorney general...
...which was confirmed by the Federal report, President Bush sent two of his goons...that would be White House Chief of staff Andrew Card and former disgraced Attorney General Roberto Gonzales to John Ashcroft's hospital bedside to try to get him to sign and reauthorize a program even though he was in an ICU bed in critical condition...
Now as both Angler and David Sanger's book 'The Inheritance' flesh out James Comey and John Ashcroft were prepared to resign over this program. But even I did not know the depth of how far the lawyers who found this program illegal were ready to go. When James Comey went to talk to the President about this program, which the President wanted and James Comey as the acting Attorney General objected to Comey was prepared to resign. But he was not the only one. Every deputy working for George Tenet under the CIA, The FBI Director, Every Deputy working for the FBI Director and every single Department head and Deputy Attorney General at Justice were ready to and were going to resign over this program and its illegality.
That move if triggered would have effectively decapitated the government. And the amazing thing is barely anyone knew. These were over 40 of the most arch conservative Federalist society certified lawyers in the country. Almost all of them Bush appointees. And because of this disconnect where Bush let Cheney just 'handle it' and he was not in the loop for what was happening...Bush had no idea about this revolt until it was on his doorstep.
Now on the Sunday talk shows we saw a very strange reaction from the Republican party. John McCain with a smile saying this was the 'tip of the iceberg' had a flair for understatement. Jon Kyl on This Week was practically a blithering idiot in his response...
And Peter King who sits on the Intelligence Committee has called strangely for a 'scorched Earth policy'...
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/13/gop-hits-pursuit-of-torture-probe/
What the hell is wrong with these people? You know I didn't want to look at the past, just let history judge the Bush administration as it was. But this is entering ridiculous territory though now. How big does a crime have to be before Congress holds anyone in Washington accountable? If Obama was pulling this crap I would argue for his impeachment. I know he should already be called on the carpet because he is still doing CIA Rendition. But if you don't investigate crimes that are happening right before your eyes just because you think it will be politically inconvenient doesn't that make you an accomplice to the crimes?
