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Europe

Gaarzon rules out dropping Gitmo probe

2009-04-19

[Al Arabiya Latest] A Spanish judge considering possible criminal action against six former Bush administration officials for torture at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay defied pressure to drop the case on Friday. However Judge Baltasar Garzon, internationally known for trying to extradite former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, accepted that he might not personally take charge of any eventual criminal investigation into officials including former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Public prosecutors at the National Audience, Spain's top criminal court earlier issued an official request to Garzon to drop the investigation. They said Garzon was unqualified to carry out such a "general inquiry into policies put in place by the previous U.S. administration."

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International-UN-NGOs

Spain has no right to try U.S. officials

2009-04-03

By Douglas Feith A lawyer in Spain -- who did his legal studies while serving over seven years in prison for kidnapping and terrorism -- has engineered a complaint accusing the U.S. government of systematically torturing war-on-terrorism detainees. He filed this complaint with Baltasar Garzon, an activist magistrate famous for championing the "universal jurisdiction" of Spanish courts. That magistrate is now asking a Spanish prosecutor to bring criminal charges on this matter against former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, four other former Bush administration lawyers, and me. The allegation is not that any of us tortured anyone. And it is not that any of us even directed anyone to commit torture. The allegation is that, when we advised President George W. Bush on the Geneva Conventions and detainee interrogations, our interpretations were wrong -- in the view of the disapproving Spaniards. According to the complaint, these wrong interpretations encouraged the president to make decisions that led to torture. The Spanish magistrate apparently believes that it can be a crime for American officials to offer the wrong kind of advice to a president of the United States and, furthermore, it can be a crime punishable by a Spanish court. This is a national insult with harmful implications. The general sloppiness of the complaint's factual assertions is clear from its discussion of my work. The entire case against me hinges on my alleged role in arguing that the detainees in Guantanamo Bay should not receive protection under Geneva Article 3 relating to humane treatment. I never made any such argument. On the contrary, the most significant role I played in the debates about Geneva was in early 2002 when I -- together with Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers -- helped persuade Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to take a strongly pro-Geneva position in the first National Security Council meeting on the subject on Feb. 4. Noting in writing that Geneva is part of U.S. law, I argued it is a good treaty and it is "important that the President appreciate DOD's interest in the Convention." I wrote that "U.S. armed forces are trained to treat captured enemy forces according to the Convention," that Geneva is "morally important, crucial to U.S. morale," and that it is also "practically important, for it makes U.S. forces the gold standard in the world, facilitating our winning cooperation from other countries." In conclusion, I urged "[h]umane treatment for all detainees" and recommended that the president explain that Geneva "does not squarely address circumstances that we are confronting in this new global war against terrorism, but while we work through the legal questions, we are upholding the principle of universal applicability of the Convention." I briefed these arguments directly to the president at that Feb. 4 NSC meeting, and his decision on Geneva's applicability to the war against the Taliban was consistent with them. The allegation that I argued against Article 3 protection was invented by a British lawyer named Philippe Sands and published in an angry, wildly inaccurate book called "Torture Team." Mr. Sands asserts that, in our interview, I admitted making the case against Article 3. He was eventually compelled to publish the interview transcript, however, and it shows that nothing I said supports his allegation, that he grossly misquoted me on a number of points, and that he never asked me a single question about Article 3. Mr. Sands has to this day never accounted for how he could charge me with opposing Article 3 based on an interview in which the term "Article 3" was never even mentioned by me or him. I dissected Mr. Sands's misrepresentations in detail in testimony I gave to the House Judiciary Committee last summer. As bad as the Spanish complaint is for relying expressly on Mr. Sands's discredited book for facts, it is far worse for the principle it is trying to establish -- that a foreign court should punish former U.S. officials criminally if the judge thinks their official advice to the U.S. president violated international law. Whatever advice any of us offered the president on these debatable issues, it would be an unprecedented outrage to make our participation in government policy making a subject for second-guessing in a foreign criminal court. From the Nuremburg trials of the Nazi leadership forward, none of the cases in which former government officials have been tried for international crimes are actually precedents for what the Spanish officials are now considering. In countries run by officials who rule by force, commit aggression, perpetrate humanitarian outrages and stand above and out of reach of any domestic law, leaders are sometimes tried by international tribunals. Such countries' sovereignty is not respected because their own domestic laws -- let alone their international legal obligations -- do not bind their leaders. But ours is a country of laws, and no reasonable person doubts that the American legal system has integrity. If President Barack Obama and the prosecutors see a crime to be prosecuted, they can act. It would be hostile for a foreign official to decide that U.S. sovereignty on this matter should not be respected because the U.S. is like Nazi Germany or Serbia under Slobodan Milosevic. What if a Spanish magistrate doesn't like the legal analyses prepared by U.S. officials on other subjects, such as nuclear weapons, or the death penalty, or atmospheric pollution, or border security with Mexico? Any of these matters could be the basis for a claim by a creative European jurist that a U.S. official is taking a position contrary to international law as interpreted by right-thinking Europeans. It seems clear that the goal of this judicial exercise is to carry a political disagreement into criminal courts and thereby to intimidate U.S. officials. If Spanish officials decide to carry the prosecution forward, then Americans who know that their views run contrary to those of various Spanish or other European activists would have to think twice about voicing those views -- or stay out of U.S. government service altogether -- if they want to avoid being threatened with arrest in Europe. The American people can tolerate this only if they are willing to forfeit the right to make their own laws and policies. This is not a left-versus-right political issue. It is a question of preserving the American constitutional system of government in which U.S. officials are answerable for their opinions and advice to the American people -- but not to foreign criminal courts.

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Europe

In which Judge Baltasar Garzon breaks my heart

2009-03-29

Yeah, I know. I wuz warned. A Spanish court has agreed to consider opening a criminal case against six former Bush administration officials, including former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, over allegations they gave legal cover for torture at Guantanamo Bay, a lawyer in the case said Saturday. Human rights lawyers brought the case before leading anti-terror judge Baltasar Garzon, who agreed to send it on to prosecutors to decide whether it had merit, Gonzalo Boye, one of the lawyers who brought the charges, told The Associated Press. The ex-Bush officials are Gonzales; former undersecretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith; former Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff David Addington; Justice Department officials John Yoo and Jay S. Bybee; and Pentagon lawyer William Haynes. Yoo declined to comment. A request for comment left with Feith through his Hudson Institute e-mail address was not immediately returned. Spanish law allows courts to reach beyond national borders in cases of torture or war crimes under a doctrine of universal justice, though the government has recently said it hopes to limit the scope of the legal process. Garzon became famous for bringing charges against former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998, and he and other Spanish judges have agreed to investigate alleged abuses everywhere from Tibet to Argentina's "dirty war," El Salvador and Rwanda. Still, the country's record in prosecuting such cases has been spotty at best, with only one suspect extradited to Spain so far. When a similar case was brought against Israeli officials earlier this year, Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos assured his Israeli counterpart that the process would be quashed. Even if indictments are eventually handed down against the U.S. officials, it is far from clear whether arrests would ever take place. The officials would have to travel outside the United States and to a country willing to take them into custody before possible extradition to Spain. Kinda like extraordinary rendition, without the Chloroform. Boye said he expected the National Court to take the case forward, and dismissed concerns that it would harm bilateral relations between the two countries. He said that some of the victims of the alleged torture were Spaniards, strengthening the argument for Spanish jurisdiction. "When you bring a case like this you can't stop to make political judgments as to how it might affect bilateral relations between countries," he told the AP." It's too important for that." Boye noted that the case was brought not against interrogators who might have committed crimes but by the lawyers and other high-placed officials who gave cover for their actions. "Our case is a denunciation of lawyers, by lawyers, because we don't believe our profession should be used to help commit such barbarities," he said. Another lawyer with detailed knowledge of the case told the AP that Garzon's decision to consider the charges was "a significant first step." The lawyer spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media. There was no immediate comment from Garzon or the government. The judge's decision to send the case against the American officials to prosecutors means it will proceed, at least for now. Prosecutors must now decide whether to recommend a full-blown investigation, though Garzon is not bound by their decision. The proceedings against the Bush Administration officials could be embarrassing for Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who has been keen to improve ties with the United States after frosty relations during the Bush Administration Zapatero is scheduled to meet President Barack Obama for the first time on April 5 during a summit in Prague. Time to go to the barricades, like Bashir's constituents. Anyone want to chant some "anti-Spanish court" slogans with me?

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Home Front: Politix

Cheney, Gonzales indicted in South Texas county

2008-11-19

Vice President Dick Cheney and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have been indicted on state charges involving federal prisons in a South Texas county that has been a source of bizarre legal and political battles under the outgoing prosecutor. The indictment returned Monday has not yet been signed by the presiding judge, and no action can be taken until that happens. The seven indictments made public in Willacy County on Tuesday included one naming state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. and some targeting public officials connected to District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra's own legal battles. Regarding the indictments targeting the public officials, Guerra said, "the grand jury is the one that made those decisions, not me." Guerra himself was under indictment for more than a year and half until a judge dismissed the indictments last month. Guerra's tenure ends this year after nearly two decades in office. He lost convincingly in a Democratic primary in March. Guerra said the prison-related charges against Cheney and Gonzales are a national issue and experts from across the country testified to the grand jury. Cheney is charged with engaging in an organized criminal activity related to the vice president's investment in the Vanguard Group, which holds financial interests in the private prison companies running the federal detention centers. It accuses Cheney of a conflict of interest and "at least misdemeanor assaults" on detainees because of his link to the prison companies. Megan Mitchell, a spokeswoman for Cheney, declined to comment on Tuesday, saying that the vice president had not yet received a copy of the indictment. The indictment accuses Gonzales of using his position while in office to stop an investigation in 2006 into abuses at one of the privately-run prisons. Gonzales' attorney, George Terwilliger III, said in a written statement, "This is obviously a bogus charge on its face, as any good prosecutor can recognize." He said he hoped Texas authorities would take steps to stop "this abuse of the criminal justice system." Another indictment released Tuesday accuses Lucio of profiting from his public office by accepting honoraria from prison management companies. Guerra announced his intention to investigate Lucio's prison consulting early last year. Lucio's attorney, Michael Cowen, released a scathing statement accusing Guerra of settling political scores in his final weeks in office. "Senator Lucio is completely innocent and has done nothing wrong," Cowen said, adding that he would file a motion to quash the indictment this week. Willacy County has become a prison hub with county, state and federal lockups. Guerra has gone after the prison-politician nexus before, extracting guilty pleas from three former Willacy and Webb county commissioners after investigating bribery related to federal prison contacts.

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Home Front: Politix

Former Attorney General Gonzales stored TS/SCI docs at home.... but its OK.

2008-09-03

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department refused to prosecute former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for improperly — and possibly illegally — storing in his office and home classified information about two of the Bush administration's most sensitive counterterrorism efforts. Mishandling classified materials violates Justice Department regulations, and removing them from special secure facilities without proper authorization is a misdemeanor crime. A report issued Tuesday by the Justice Department's inspector general says the agency decided not to press charges against Gonzales, who resigned under fire last year. Balance and DOJ finding at the link

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Home Front: WoT

Feds ask to halt inmate access at Supermax after letter leaks

2008-02-03

A group of Denver law students fighting to overturn some regulations at the Supermax prison in Colorado has found that the very rules they are fighting might bar them from continuing to represent the convicted terrorists. letters from three men housed in Supermax were found with terrorism suspects in Spain After letters from three men housed in Supermax were found with terrorism suspects in Spain, federal officials issued sweeping new rules forbidding inmates from writing letters to those outside immediate family, reading the classified ads in newspapers and attending prison religious services. The government is now arguing that the rules, called special administrative measures, or SAMs, should also forbid prison visits by University of Denver law students who are representing two of the terrorists in a civil-rights lawsuit against the government. The suit, filed in Denver's U.S. District Court, alleges that the measures violate the inmates' civil rights. In January, Judge Wiley Y. Daniel granted the students access to Nidal Ayyad and Mahmud Abouhalima over the objection of the U.S. attorney's office. But on Wednesday, the government asked the judge to reconsider and filed a motion to put the students' access on hold while an appeal is pending. The government argues that, because the students aren't yet lawyers, they might be more willing to pass messages from the terrorists to outside contacts. Even if caught, the reasoning goes, they would not lose their licenses to practice. Would they be allowed to take the bar exam? As I recall most states have an ethics and morals clause. University of Denver law professor Laura Rovner said that argument doesn't hold water, given that the students would clearly subject themselves to federal prosecution if they aided terrorists in Supermax, which is west of Pueblo in Florence. Lynne Stewart thought she could pull it off ... "There are very real consequences, and the stakes are quite high," Rovner said. "If the students were to violate the SAMs, they will never be licensed to practice law and there would be the possibility out there of a criminal conviction for passing information." Former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales first imposed the special administrative measures in March 2005 after he learned letters sent from Supermax were being used to recruit suicide bombers in Spain. Inmates in Colorado wrote more than 90 letters to Islamic extremists in Spain with links to the terrorist cell responsible for the Madrid train bombings Inmates in Colorado wrote more than 90 letters to Islamic extremists in Spain with links to the terrorist cell responsible for the Madrid train bombings in March 2004, according to federal reports. One of Mohammad Salameh's letters was found in possession of Mohamed Achraf, the leader of a radical Muslim cell who is charged with plotting to blow up the National Court in downtown Madrid. Salameh is serving 116 years in Supermax for his role in the 1993 attempt to blow up the World Trade Center. Originally, the special administrative rules were to be in effect for just one year, but they have been extended annually since then. The inmates say that they now only receive certain newspapers, such as USA Today — but the classified ads and editorial-page letters are cut out. Why do they need the classifieds -- planning to buy a car? Letters to immediate family are delayed for weeks while they are translated and analyzed by the Bureau of Prisons and the FBI. "Dear Father, life continues to go along for me here in infidel prison. Please give wishes to mother and most especially to little cousin Fatima, and make sure Mahmoud gets the detonators to Hussein on the 19th." The prisoners are prohibited from sending letters to extended family or friends. The prisoners, through their student legal representatives, have argued there was never a hearing to decide whether the letters they sent to Spain contained messages of violence. Doesn't need to be. They violated the rules, so they lose their privileges. That's what a 'prison' is all about. Colorado's U.S. attorney, Troy Eid, declined to say what was written in the letters or whether the messages incited the commuter train bombings. After the special administrative measures were imposed in 2005, Salameh stopped eating for 89 days. When the rules were extended in 2006, he fasted for 72 days and again for 20 days, his lawsuit says. Salameh has retained his own private attorney in the suit against the rules. "Mr. Salameh was subjected to more than 100 force-feedings via naso-gastric tube," the suit says. That's terrible. He fasted for 181 days total: that should have been 362 tube feedings, not just 100. They were under-nourishing this man! Abouhalima, an Egyptian native serving a 108-year sentence for participating in the trade center bombing, said that he did not send mail to the Spanish inmates but that he received mail from them at Salameh's urging. He said he never got a chance to talk to prison officials about the letters before the restrictions were imposed. Ayyad, an American citizen serving 117 years in prison for procuring chemicals used in the World Trade Center bombing, said that he wrote to a prisoner in Spain for one year and that he gave his letters to prison staff for review before he sent them. "That's another fine mess you've gotten me into, Salami!" "The plaintiff in his correspondence with the prison in Spain never encouraged violence, nor . . . ever condoned it in any way, form or fashion," Ayyad's suit says. "The plaintiff never received any incident reports for correspondence misconduct." "No, no, certainly not!" That may be because prison officials were not fully reviewing the letters until they turned up with terrorists overseas. A September 2006 report by the Justice Department's inspector general noted that the Bureau of Prisons was not "adequately" reading mail or listening to calls made by imprisoned terrorists. Eid says the government has a responsibility to make sure that inmates do not continue to commit crimes or influence terrorist attacks. "When we have a known threat, we have to be prudent," he said. "The public expects that of us. We are supposed to see justice through from the beginning until they leave the system."

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Home Front: Politix

U.S. details wiretap delays in American {3} GI's kidnap case

2007-10-01

I may have missed this if it has already been posted. I searched and didn't find it -- thought it needed to be read, even if it comes from Reuters. Those Dems just keep on killing our guys! U.S. authorities racing to find three kidnapped American soldiers in Iraq last May labored for nearly 10 hours to get legal authority for wiretaps to help in the hunt, an intelligence official told Congress on Thursday. The top U.S. spy agency, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, sent Congress a timeline detailing the wiretap effort as the Bush administration makes its case to wary Democrats for a permanent expansion of its authority to eavesdrop on the foreign communications of terrorism suspects. "In order to comply with the law, the government was required to spend valuable time obtaining an emergency authorization ... to engage in collection related to the kidnapping," Ronald Burgess, principle deputy director to McConnell, said in a letter to U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes. Reyes, a Texas Democrat, is chairman of the House of Representatives intelligence committee. Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell has been under fire from some Democrats in control of Congress who say misstatements have eroded his credibility. Some Democrats and civil liberties advocates say a temporary expansion of the eavesdropping authority passed in August threatens the rights of Americans and any permanent law needs more protections. The timeline shows that at 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT) on May 15, after three days of developing leads on the whereabouts of the three soldiers who went missing south of Baghdad, U.S. agencies met to discuss ways of obtaining more intelligence. Concluding at 12:53 p.m. EDT (1653 GMT) that requirements for emergency eavesdropping approval had been met, officials spent more than four hours debating "novel and complicated issues" in the case. They spent about more two hours to obtain final approval from then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who was traveling. The wiretap began at 7:38 p.m. (2138 GMT). Authorities then had 72 hours to obtain a special court's endorsement of the emergency authority, which was granted, a U.S. official said. McConnell told the committee last week that an outdated provision in the eavesdropping law made the approval necessary because the targeted foreign communications were carried in part on a wire inside the United States. "We are extending Fourth Amendment (constitutional) rights to a terrorist foreigner ... who's captured U.S. soldier," he said, arguing that this was unnecessary and burdensome. Congress temporarily broadened the law in August so such approval would no longer be required, but that legislation expires in February and U.S. President George W. Bush wants a permanent law enacted. An al Qaeda-led group in June said it had killed the three soldiers, and showed pictured of ID cards of two of the men.

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Home Front: WoT

The National Intelligence Director Explains Why Bush's Critics Have Blood on Their Hands

2007-08-30

Because he's resigning, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales won't have much chance to exercise his powers under the Protect America Act. The new law charges the attorney general with determining which international communications involving people in the U.S. will be subject to warrantless surveillance. Members of Congress were so distrustful of Gonzales that they insisted he share this authority with the director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell. But while McConnell, the apolitical expert, may enjoy a better reputation for honesty and independence than Gonzales, the longtime Bush crony, the two men seem to have similar instincts about privacy and executive power. In a recent interview with the El Paso Times, McConnell regrets the debate about the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program: "The fact (that) we're doing it this way means that some Americans are going to die," he says. "Because it's so public." McConnell is trying to frighten Americans into supporting President Bush's anti-terrorism policies. Worse, he is charging critics of those policies with complicity in murder. As Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy, observes, "He's basically saying that democracy is going to kill Americans." And not just democracy but constitutional government of any kind, because by McConnell's logic, anything that interferes with the president's unilateral decisions regarding national security "means that some Americans are going to die." McConnell wants to have it both ways: Terrorists are so sophisticated that the government needs broad surveillance powers to thwart them, yet they are too stupid to realize someone might be listening to their phone calls or reading their e-mails. Evidently the possibility occurred to them only after they read about it in the newspaper. Because the discussion of NSA surveillance has not revealed information specific enough to help terrorists escape detection, it seems clear McConnell's real concern is that public debate might impede Bush's policies. This is a new twist on the old argument for secrecy: Information must be kept from the public not just to keep it from our enemies but to prevent the public from objecting to measures the president considers necessary to protect national security. Providing further evidence that he sees classification as a way to avoid the inconvenience of defending the administration's policies, McConnell uses the interview to confirm something the administration has long insisted it could not discuss safely: that telecommunications companies helped the NSA conduct its warrantless surveillance. Although that much may have seemed obvious, the Justice Department has tried to stop lawsuits against the cooperating carriers by arguing that even acknowledging their help would endanger national security. But now that Bush wants Congress to give the companies retroactive immunity from liability for aiding and abetting the illegal snooping, McConnell is suddenly more forthcoming. "Under the president's program," he says, "the private sector had assisted us." Now those assistants need assistance, he explains, because "if you play out the suits at the value they're claimed, it would bankrupt these companies." Judging from this example, Bush administration officials feel duty-bound to withhold information when it might be useful to critics of the president's anti-terrorism policies, because those policies are necessary to protect national security. But they believe the very same information can -- indeed, should -- be released at a more opportune time, when it will help the president pursue his policies. In the interview, McConnell makes a point of describing himself as "an apolitical figure" who has voted for candidates from both major parties and is neither a Democrat nor a Republican. He means to reassure us that we can trust him, a nonpartisan professional, to make decisions about whose communications to monitor. But McConnell is a professional spy. He naturally wants to do his spying as free from restrictions as possible. We would not trust prosecutors to say what due process is, and we should not trust spies to define the limits of our privacy. My favorite quote from Ben Franklin seems apropos: "Those who would give up essential liberty, for a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

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Home Front: WoT

The Disgrace Of 'Al-Qongress'

2007-08-09

Investor's Business Daily says it plain and clear War On Terror: If al-Qaida were writing Congress' script, it's hard to imagine things would play out much differently than what leading Democrats are doing now. Considering the threat we're under, that's a chilling statement. The CIA's tough interrogation of terrorist prisoners like 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has helped foil at least 10 serious al-Qaida plots, three of them on U.S. soil, according to President Bush. But far from being grateful to those in government who have saved perhaps thousands of innocent American lives, Democrats in Congress are acting like al-Qaida stooges But far from being grateful to those in government who have saved perhaps thousands of innocent American lives, Democrats in Congress are acting like al-Qaida stooges: The second-ranking Senate Democrat, Richard Durbin of Illinois, demands that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales tell him whether "it be legal for a foreign government to subject a United States citizen to these so-called enhanced interrogation techniques?" Senate Intelligence Committee member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., is blocking the confirmation of John Rizzo, nominated as CIA general counsel by the president, because the 30-year-plus veteran of the agency helped establish the interrogation program. In anticipation of a possible congressional investigation, "a number of CIA officers have taken out professional liability insurance, to help with potential legal fees," reporter Jane Mayer recounts being told by a former CIA officer in the latest issue of the New Yorker. Will our soldiers on the front lines in Afghanistan and Iraq be sued too? Mayer's "Black Sites" article has caused quite a buzz, but while it reveals details showing the CIA program to be appropriately tough, it also indicates it not to be torture — and its indispensability in wartime. Two CIA sources say Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's cell was adorned with a sign that read, "The Proud Murderer of 3,000 Americans." One former CIA officer told Mayer, "There was absolutely nothing done to K.S.M. that wasn't done to the interrogators themselves," referring to their own interrogation resistance training. According to a confidential Red Cross report, "Mohammed claimed that he was shackled and kept naked, except for a pair of goggles and earmuffs. (Some prisoners were kept naked for as long as forty days.)" Degrading? Certainly, as befits such a mass murder. But mild compared with, say, Mohammed's admitted decapitation of journalist Daniel Pearl. The same Red Cross report noted that "meals were delivered sporadically, to ensure that the prisoners remained temporally disoriented. The food was largely tasteless, and barely enough to live on. Mohammed, who upon his capture in Rawalpindi was photographed looking flabby and unkempt, was now described as being slim." An intensified version of Weight Watchers may be unpleasant, but it does not constitute torture. After "waterboarding" treatment — also, apparently, something CIA special forces are subjected to in their training — Mohammed, the former CIA officer told Mayer, "didn't resist. He sang right away. He cracked real quick." Clearly, the CIA's tough interrogation was an effective tool. Robert Grenier, a former CIA counterterrorism center chief, told Mayer, "I can respect people who oppose aggressive interrogations, but they should admit that their principles may be putting American lives at risk." Congress is putting American lives at risk not only by trying to prevent the tough interrogation of terrorists, but in its insistence that the Protect America Act passed last week, authorizing terrorist surveillance, should expire six months from now. We can all be sure that Iran and al-Qaida's jihad against America won't be expiring when that legislation sunsets early next year. In the meantime, the threat is as great as ever: James Woolsey, who served as CIA director under President Clinton and has been bitingly critical of Clinton's policies against terrorism, told NewsMax that terrorists might be able to get a hold of cesium or strontium and detonate a radioactive dirty bomb, or obtain anthrax for a biological attack. "I think the threat of a serious attack in the next few months is very real," Woolsey said. Interviewed by ABC News, Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff recounted the split-second directives that were required to foil last year's London airline plot, in which as many as eight airliners could have been downed with hidden liquid explosives, slaughtering thousands. "You had to change literally thousands of people's behavior in the course of about 12 hours," Chertoff said. "So that everybody would understand what needed to happen at 6 a.m. the following day." Imagine if having to get warrants from judges were added to that process. Every senator and congressman takes a solemn oath to support and defend the Constitution, which We the People ordained and established to, among other purposes, "provide for the common defense." Trying to dismantle some of our most effective and innovative defenses against terrorists for political advantage comes close to violating that oath.

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-Lurid Crime Tales-

Looking For a Leaker: NSA Leaker that is

2007-08-06

If you can read through all the bias and the misinformation in this article, and read between the lines, there seems to be some serious looking into who leaked the NSA story to the NYTimes. I don't think they were going through this guy's stuff for nothing. Aug. 13, 2007 issue - The controversy over President Bush's warrantless surveillance program took another surprise turn last week when a team of FBI agents, armed with a classified search warrant, raided the suburban Washington home of a former Justice Department lawyer. The lawyer, Thomas M. Tamm, previously worked in Justice's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR)—the supersecret unit that oversees surveillance of terrorist and espionage targets. The agents seized Tamm's desktop computer, two of his children's laptops and a cache of personal files. Tamm and his lawyer, Paul Kemp, declined any comment. So did the FBI. But two legal sources who asked not to be identified talking about an ongoing case told NEWSWEEK the raid was related to a Justice criminal probe into who leaked details of the warrantless eavesdropping program to the news media. The raid appears to be the first significant development in the probe since The New York Times reported in December 2005 that Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on the international phone calls and e-mails of U.S. residents without court warrants. (At the time, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said of the leak: "This is really hurting national security; this has really hurt our country.") A veteran federal prosecutor who left DOJ last year, Tamm worked at OIPR during a critical period in 2004 when senior Justice officials first strongly objected to the surveillance program. Those protests led to a crisis that March when, according to recent Senate testimony, then A.G. John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller and others threatened to resign, prompting Bush to scale the program back. Tamm, said one of the legal sources, had shared concerns about he program's legality, but it was unclear whether he actively participated in the internal DOJ protest. The FBI raid on Tamm's home comes when Gonzales himself is facing criticism for allegedly misleading Congress by denying there had been "serious disagreement" within Justice about the surveillance program. The A.G. last week apologized for "creating confusion," but Senate Judiciary Committee chair Sen. Patrick Leahy said he is weighing asking Justice's inspector general to review Gonzales's testimony. Gonzales testified that the differences were not about this program, but something different The raid also came while the White House and Congress were battling over expanding NSA wiretapping authority in order to plug purported "surveillance gaps." James X. Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and Technology said the raid was "amazing" and shows the administration's misplaced priorities: using FBI agents to track down leakers instead of processing intel warrants to close the gaps. A Justice spokesman declined to comment. -Michael Isikoff

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Home Front: Politix

House Rejects Democratic Terrorist Surveillance Spy Bill

2007-08-04

WASHINGTON (AP) - Congress and the White House struggled Friday over expanding authority to eavesdrop on suspected foreign terrorists in a high-stakes showdown over national security. The House rejected a Democratic proposal opposed by President Bush that would give him that authority for only four months. The largely party-line vote in favor of the bill was 218-207. Not completely party-line then, as a few Blue Dogs had to have crossed over. Senate Democrats, meanwhile, prepared to concede to a bill supported by the White House limiting that authority to six months. It also would allow the director of national intelligence and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to carry out the expanded eavesdropping for four months before a court signs off on it. The House vote left the bill's fate in doubt. ``I hope that there are no attacks before we are able to effectively update this important act,'' said Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee. Bush earlier Friday coupled his demand for legislation with a threat to veto any bill that his intelligence director deemed unable ``to prevent an attack on the country.'' ``We've worked hard and in good faith with the Democrats to find a solution, but we are not going to put our national security at risk,'' Bush said after meeting with counterterror and homeland security officials at FBI headquarters. ``Time is short.'' Presidents have authority to call Congress back in session from a recess, but the last time it was used was in 1948, by Harry Truman. Oh, that would crinkle the Dhimmis' panties. Have Bush put them on the spot like that? Heh.

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Home Front: Culture Wars

Sen. Feingold Proposes Censuring Bush

2007-07-23

WASHINGTON (AP) - Liberal Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold said Sunday he wants Congress to censure President Bush for his management of the Iraq war and his "assault" against the Constitution. But Feingold's own party leader in the Senate showed little interest in the idea. An attempt in 2006 by Feingold to censure Bush over the warrantless spying program attracted only three co-sponsors. Attaboy Russ, keep trying, you might get five this time. Feingold, a prominent loon war critic, said he soon plans to offer two censure resolutions - measures that would amount to a formal condemnation of the Republican president. The first would seek to reprimand Bush for, as Feingold described it, getting the nation into war without adequate military preparation and for issuing misleading public statements. The resolution also would cite Vice President Dick Cheney and perhaps other administration officials. Funny, the Dhimmicrats all thought we had an adequate military in 2002. And where are their votes to increase and improve our military since that time? As to 'misleading' statements, everyone in 2002 seemed to understand the true nature of Saddam Hussein. Did that change? The second measure would seek to censure Bush for what the Democrat called a continuous assault against the rule of law through such efforts as the warrantless surveillance program against suspected terrorists, Feingold said. It would also ask for a reprimand of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and maybe others. Because we shouldn't keep track of suspected terrorists. Might violate their rights. "This is an opportunity for people to say, let's at least reflect on the record that something terrible has happened here," said Feingold, D-Wis. "This administration has weakened America in a way that is frightful." At the White House, spokesman Trey Bohn said, "We realize that Senator Feingold does not care much for the president's policies." Bohn said Bush wants to work with Feingold and other Democrats on such matters as supporting U.S. troops, improving energy choices and securing health care and tax cuts for families. "Perhaps after calls for censure and more investigations, Congress may turn to such things," Bohn said. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he wished this would all go away would not go along with them and said the Senate needs to focus on finishing spending bills on defense and homeland security.

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