Read All About It In the Sunday Papers: Constitution-Shredding Edition
“We interrupt this Very Special Larry King Roundtable to bring you this Breaking News. Sources are reporting that former Vice-President Dick Cheney personally instructed the CIA to withhold any and all information from Congress regarding highly-secret programs pertaining to illegally gathering information about, and from, American citizens.”
“We now return you to “Michael Jackson-Is He in Heaven or in Hell?”, featuring Larry’s special guests, Brooke Shields, Rep. Peter King, and Bubbles the Chimp.”
LK: “Now, Bubbles, how did it feel to meet the Mayor of Osaka….”
There are Friday Afternoon News Dumps, and then there are Friday Afternoon News Dumps. This Friday featured perhaps the most disgraceful bold-faced news dump in history. Reports from Inspectors-General from five U. S. intelligence agencies detailing Cheney’s and the Bush Administration’s success in breaching institutional and constitutional barriers to conduct their illegal operations. Released at the optimal time to minimize coverage. For the most part, a successful operation, what with the second- and third-stringers subbing for what passes for America’s journalistic royalty.
So, El Somnambulo will try to (metaphorically) scream over the vitiligo-induced White Noise to let you know what your guv’mint’s been up to. He will deviate from tradition, and simply find the best analysis and information arising out of this news dump, regardless of whether or not the content has appeared in one of today’s papers.
LEAD STORY: NY TIMES-Cheney Concealed CIA Project From Congress and American People
The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency’s director,Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.
The disclosure about Mr. Cheney’s role in the unidentified C.I.A. program comes a day after an inspector general’s report underscored the central role of the former vice president’s office in restricting to a small circle of officials knowledge of the National Security Agency’s program of eavesdropping without warrants, a degree of secrecy that the report concluded had hurt the effectiveness of the counterterrorism surveillance effort.
A report released on Friday by the inspectors general of five agencies about the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program makes clear that Mr. Cheney’s legal adviser, David S. Addington, had to approve personally every government official who was told about the program. The report said “the exceptionally compartmented nature of the program” frustrated F.B.I. agents who were assigned to follow up on tips it had turned up.
Frankly, a pretty weak effort from the Times, included to provide the vital context.
Associated Press: “Program Extended Far Beyond Wiretapping”
The News-Journal made this its lead story on Saturday. Kudos to whoever remains there, and whoever had the common news sense to identify the story’s importance.Highlights of the article:
The Bush administration authorized secret surveillance activities that still have not been made public, according to a new government report that questions the legal basis for the unprecedented anti-terrorism program.
(Sunday Update, from the AP’s Pamela Hess: WASHINGTON — Former Vice President Dick Cheney directed the CIA eight years ago not to inform Congress about a nascent counterterrorism program that CIA Director Leon Panetta terminated in June, officials with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.)
President George W. Bush authorized other secret intelligence activities — which have yet to become public — even as he was launching the massive warrentless wiretapping program, the summary said. It describes the entire program as the “President’s Surveillance Program.”
The IG report said an unnamed White House official inserted a paragraph into the first threat assessment prepared by the CIA after the Sept. 11 attacks, which was used to justify the extraordinary intelligence measures.
The report also questions the legal advice used by President Bush to set up the program, pinpointing omissions and questionable legal memos written by Yoo at the Justice Department.
The report suggests (former WH attorney and current Philadelphia Inquirer ‘contributor’ John) Yoo ignored an explicit provision in the FISA law designed to restrict the government’s authority to conduct electronic surveillance during wartime. And it said flaws in Yoo’s memos later presented “a serious impediment” to recertifying the program.
Talking Points Memo: Dubya Personally Tried to Force Ashcroft to Sign Off on Illegal Surveillance
Turns out that Alberto Gonzales was telling the truth about President Bush directing his staff to go to then-AG John Ashcroft’s bedside to try to force him to sign off on his electronic surveillance program. From the IG Report:
According to notes from Ashcroft’s FBI security detail, at 6:20 p.m. that evening Card called the hospital and spoke with an agent in Ashcroft’s security detail, advising him that President Bush would be calling shortly to speak with Ashcroft. Ashcroft’s wife told the agent that Ashcroft would not accept the call. Ten minutes later, the agent called Ashcroft’s Chief of Staff David Ayres at DOJ to request that Ayres speak with Card about the President’s intention to call Ashcroft. The agent conveyed to Ayres Mrs. Ashcroft’s desire that no calls be made to Ashcroft for another day or two. However, at 6:45 p.m., Card and the President called the hospital and, according to the agent’s notes, “insisted on speaking [with Attorney General Ashcroft].” According to the agent’s notes, Mrs. Ashcroft took the call from Card and the President and was informed that Gonzales and Card were coming to the hospital to see Ashcroft regarding a matter involving national security.
From TPM:
In other words, President Bush, apparently knowing that Ashcroft’s wife did not want him seeing visitors or even speaking on the phone, nonetheless informed her that his staff would be coming to the hospital to get the sign-off they needed.
The passage essentially confirms a report from last year by Murray Waas in The Atlantic that Gonzo had told investigators that it was indeed President Bush who directed him to Ashcroft’s bedside. And the president’s call itself was first reported by Barton Gellman in his 2008 book Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency.
Of course, in Ashcroft’s finest moment, Card and Gonzales were unsuccessful. But they would soon find ways to get around the problem.
Talking Points Memo: Gonzales to DOJ-Shut Up
More brilliant (pardon the expression, MSM) reporting from the absolutely essential TPM. (Seriously, you need to be reading this site at least once a day.)Before he became AG, Gonzo was a ‘White House Attorney’. Here he lets Justice know just who’s runnin’ the show. The White House Counsel Gonzales to Deputy Attorney General James Comey, who had questioned the legality of the surveillance program, in a 2004 letter:
Your misunderstanding appears to have been based on a misunderstanding of the President’s expectations regarding the conduct of the Department of Justice. While the President was, and remains, interested in any thoughts the Department of Justice may have on alternative ways to achieve effectively the goals of the activities authorized by the Presidential Authorization of March 11. 2004, the President has addressed definitively for the Excutive Branch in the Presidential Authorization the interpretation of the law.
Just read that paragraph slowly a few times through. Orwell, meet Kafka.
Washington Independent: Lotsa Important Stuff Missing from IG’s Reports
There’s really no need to even look at the MSM anymore. The best reportorial digging and analysis is taking place elsewhere. One of the best, Spencer Ackerman, spells out what is missing from the reports, and why what’s missing is every bit as important as what is there. Some great grist for the legalistic mills of the Esq.’s among us. El Somnambulo would love their feedback, translated into English that even the Beast Who Slumbers can understand.
Newsweek: AG Holder Weighs Special Prosecutor to Investigate Torture
Weighs? This story broke before the release of the IG reports. If shredding the Constitution, running rogue operations out of the VP’s bunker, and torturing and lying about it, do not warrant a Special Prosecutor, what, other than lying about oral sex to a priggish sex-obsessed partisan, would warrant such an investigation?:
These are not just the philosophical musings of a new attorney general. Holder, 58, may be on the verge of asserting his independence in a profound way. Four knowledgeable sources tell NEWSWEEK that he is now leaning toward appointing a prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration’s brutal interrogation practices, something the president has been reluctant to do. While no final decision has been made, an announcement could come in a matter of weeks, say these sources, who decline to be identified discussing a sensitive law-enforcement matter. Such a decision would roil the country, would likely plunge Washington into a new round of partisan warfare, and could even imperil Obama’s domestic priorities, including health care and energy reform. Holder knows all this, and he has been wrestling with the question for months. “I hope that whatever decision I make would not have a negative impact on the president’s agenda,” he says. “But that can’t be a part of my decision.”
It had better not be. ‘Bulo defies anyone to identify any president, including Nixon, whose contempt for the Constitution has risen to this level of criminality. To fail to investigate this is tantamount to endorsing it.
Now, had the MSM been doing their jobs all along, as they were during Watergate, all of this would have been unearthed earlier and the Bush Administration at least would have been held accountable.
In fact, several top reporters, including Seymour Hersh and Murray Waas, did unearth pieces of this, in fact most of the puzzle, but were marginalized by the clueless talking heads and the corporate print media.
El Somnambulo believes, and he believes that the evidence demonstrates, that the Bush Administration has committed crimes that go far beyond even those of Watergate. They have, on their own, made a mockery of the constitutionally-sacrosanct “Separation of Powers”. They have violated both Federal law and international law.
The MSM meme has been to ‘move past this’, that ‘this is old news, people are tired of it.’ It is not old news. Thanks to the MSM, who failed to cover this hijacking of government by all the President’s men, this is NEW news. The media, which has become both complacent and corporatized since the early ’70’s, has unequivocally demonstrated that it is neither willing nor able to practice the timeless art of journalism in cases like this when journalism is vital to maintaining a democracy.
Fortunately, however, they’ve still got Michael Jackson to keep us comfortably numb.
“Larry will be right back after this message from Extenze…”
Tags: Media
So I guess Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Newt Gingrich and Dick Cheney have apologized to Nancy Pelosi.
What…? they haven’t. Well I’m sure they will get around to it.
The bottom line is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to not prosecute these crimes. Holder doesn’t want to do it, Pelosi doesn’t want to do it, Reid doesn’t want to do it. And Obama doesn’t want to do it.
But they need to do it. I think they want to have healthcare done before they get embroiled in this mess. Also, know this, it will be a mess. It is inextricably mixed with classified, non-classified, valid and invalid information. Untangling the threads in a way that is digestible to John Q Public may be impossible and unsatisfying.
To fail to investigate this is tantamount to endorsing it.
We have lost our republic as Benjamin Franklin predicted we might. Even the pretense of “Liberty and justice for all” has been long lost.
Sad days in America. Sad days for the world.
And the republicans and democrats who enabled and continue to enable these crimes (yes, Obama, too) are going to leave a bloody red stain on the history books documenting the fight for freedom and justice.
1. Personal Message to John Young: You ‘da man.
John Young’s Music For the Masses will appear next Saturday. Big ol’ Tip of the Sombrero!
2. Preemptive two-word response to the first Stepford Rethug who comes over here with their ‘at least they kept us safe’ BS:
“New Orleans”.
Swing and a miss on The Times story, El Som.
The Times’ story linking Cheney to the CIA coverup is huge. To call Scott Shane a “second-stringer” is sadly ignorant. He’s one of the titans of contemporary journalism.
Spencer Ackerman has a fine future, but don’t embarrass him or yourself by suggesting that his work means, “There’s really no need to even look at the MSM anymore.” It’s a bit more complicated, as Charlie Pierce, as usual, says better than I: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/altercation/425880/slacker_friday
JM: ‘Bulo did not mean to include the Times’ Shane among the ‘second-stringers’. His point, poorly made, was that your electronic media stalwarts, such as they are, disappear on summer weekends, and you’re left with the telegenic but vapid second string, ill-equipped to provide context to a story with this complexity. Which is one reason why the Friday news dump exists in the first place.
‘Bulo’s disappointment with the Times story was its relative paucity. He thought that the story called out for much greater context and detail.
As to Ackerman, is anyone else making the points that he made? ‘Bulo’s less interested in the reputations than in what they put on the table.
The 1,200- word Times Sunday story was fine, and the paper’s reporting will, I am certain, continue to draw out details on this program. I don’t watch the teevee. Ackerman will be very good when he gets an editor again. Josh’s site is the best on the ‘Net, but remember that it (1) has paid reporters, albeit at high-energy entry level; (2) relies heavily on the work done by other outlets that pay union salaries to veterans, secretaries, pressmen; and (3) is evolving into a form of MSM, albeit electronic-based, a latter-day version of the incubator of major journalists, polemicists and policy-makers that Charlie Peters has operated for decades at The Washington Monthly. In other words, what’s new is old.
My front porch is decorated daily by The Inquirer, whose pages carried marvelous work, substantially all vindicated by time, by Knight-Ridder, then McClatchy correspondents on Iraq, the Bush administration and related topics.
BTW, I greatly value [and unfortunately delayed too long to add to the prior comment] this Sunday feature by which you open all of our eyes to developments, commentary and important reporting outside our three counties.
‘Bulo was gonna write this before JM’s kind words, but he hopes that JM and many of DL’s readers and commenters make it to DL’s Miles For Melanoma Picnic on August 15.
He tends to form pictures in his mind’s eye of the faithful and the caustic, and he’s looking forward to enjoying a libation or five with everybody that day. And, no, he will not hide behind a Lucha Libre mask or the cloak of anonymity.
What could the secret spying be? My mind had already gotten around the idea that Bush was vacuuming up all phone calls and Internet traffic, but maybe that would come as a surprise to other people. Especially since Bush sold it as “listening to terrorists,” which was swallowed hook, line, and sinker by our local wingnut bloggers, among others.
Or, perhaps massive spying on our allies – that would be big.
You don’t think he’d be listening to Kerry and the Democrat’s campaign communications in 2004, now do you? Naw, of course not.
Oh crap, does this mean we have to watch Liz Cheney lying her ass off for another month?
A fascinating look at one part of the media appears today in The Inquirer, revealing that no one else is listening to commercial radio either:
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/front_page/20090712_Cutbacks__double_shifts_The_static_of_hard_times_.html
I would love to know how Clear Channel and its fellow oligarchs might be forced to sell or spin off their stations. We know ad sales have dropped, but I would love to know the industry’s profit margins, which I expect [before interest, depreciation, taxes] remain quite healthy. I would love to know the comparative ratings of the noncommercial stations. Still, this article gives a revealing glimpse at a once-wonderful medium that has been strangled by “deregulation,” or more accurately, a government-enforced monopoly conferred on a dozen or so corporate caliphs, freed to homogenize the airways and reduce them to mediocrity.
Travails of a Delaware family are described in Barbara Ehrenreich NYT op-ed today:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/opinion/12ehrenreich.html
Sounds like the Democrats need to switch to decaff. More below:
CIA Had Secret Al Qaeda Plan
Initiative at Heart of Spat With Congress Examined Ways to Seize, Kill Terror Chiefs
By SIOBHAN GORMAN, The Wall Street Journal
WASHINGTON — A secret Central Intelligence Agency initiative terminated by Director Leon Panetta was an attempt to carry out a 2001 presidential authorization to capture or kill al Qaeda operatives, according to former intelligence officials familiar with the matter.
The precise nature of the highly classified effort isn’t clear, and the CIA won’t comment on its substance.
According to current and former government officials, the agency spent money on planning and possibly some training. It was acting on a 2001 presidential legal pronouncement, known as a finding, which authorized the CIA to pursue such efforts. The initiative hadn’t become fully operational at the time Mr. Panetta ended it.
In 2001, the CIA also examined the subject of targeted assassinations of al Qaeda leaders, according to three former intelligence officials. It appears that those discussions tapered off within six months. It isn’t clear whether they were an early part of the CIA initiative that Mr. Panetta stopped.
The revelations about the CIA and its post-9/11 activities have emerged amid a renewed fight between the agency and congressional Democrats. Last week, seven Democratic lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee released a letter that talked about the CIA effort, which they said Mr. Panetta acknowledged hadn’t been properly vetted with Congress. CIA officials had brought the matter to Mr. Panetta’s attention and had recommended he inform Congress.
Neither Mr. Panetta nor the lawmakers provided details. Mr. Panetta quashed the CIA effort after learning about it June 23.
The battle is part of a long-running tug of war between the executive branch and the legislature about how to oversee the activities of the country’s intelligence services and how extensively the CIA should brief Congress. In recent years, in the light of revelations over CIA secret prisons and harsh interrogation techniques, Congress has pushed for greater oversight. The Obama administration, much like its predecessor, is resisting any moves in that direction.
Most recently, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in a dispute over what she knew about the use of waterboarding in interrogating terror suspects, has accused the agency of lying to lawmakers about its operations.
Republicans on the panel say that the CIA effort didn’t advance to a point where Congress clearly should have been notified.
CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said the agency “has not commented on the substance of the effort.” He added that “a candid dialogue with Congress is very important to this director and this agency.”
One former senior intelligence official said the program was an attempt “to achieve a capacity to carry out something that was directed in the finding,” meaning it was looking for ways to capture or kill al Qaeda chieftains.
The official noted that Congress had long been briefed on the finding, and that the CIA effort wasn’t so much a program as “many ideas suggested over the course of years.” It hadn’t come close to fruition, he added.
Michigan Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said little had been spent on the efforts — closer to $1 million than $50 million. “The idea for this kind of program was tossed around in fits and starts,” he said.
Senior CIA leaders were briefed two or three times on the most recent iteration of the initiative, the last time in the spring of 2008. At that time, CIA brass said that the effort should be narrowed and that Congress should be briefed if the preparations reached a critical stage, a former senior intelligence official said.
Amid the high alert following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a small CIA unit examined the potential for targeted assassinations of al Qaeda operatives, according to the three former officials. The Ford administration had banned assassinations in the response to investigations into intelligence abuses in the 1970s. Some officials who advocated the approach were seeking to build teams of CIA and military Special Forces commandos to emulate what the Israelis did after the Munich Olympics terrorist attacks, said another former intelligence official.
“It was straight out of the movies,” one of the former intelligence officials said. “It was like: Let’s kill them all.”
The former official said he had been told that President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney didn’t support such an operation. The effort appeared to die out after about six months, he said.
Former CIA Director George Tenet, who led the agency in the aftermath of the 2001 attacks, declined through a spokesman to comment.
Also in September 2001, as CIA operatives were preparing for an offensive in Afghanistan, officials drafted cables that would have authorized assassinations of specified targets on the spot.
One draft cable, later scrapped, authorized officers on the ground to “kill on sight” certain al Qaeda targets, according to one person who saw it. The context of the memo suggested it was designed for the most senior leaders in al Qaeda, this person said.
Eventually Mr. Bush issued the finding that authorized the capturing of several top al Qaeda leaders, and allowed officers to kill the targets if capturing proved too dangerous or risky.
Lawmakers first learned specifics of the CIA initiative the day after Mr. Panetta did, when he briefed them on it for 45 minutes.
House lawmakers are now making preparations for an investigation into “an important program” and why Congress wasn’t told about it, said Rep. Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat, in an interview.
On Sunday, lawmakers criticized the Bush administration’s decision not to tell Congress. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, hinted that the Bush administration may have broken the law by not telling Congress.
“We were kept in the dark. That’s something that should never, ever happen again,” she said. Withholding such information from Congress, she said, “is a big problem, because the law is very clear.”
Ms. Feinstein said Mr. Panetta told the lawmakers that Mr. Cheney had ordered that the information be withheld from Congress. Mr. Cheney on Sunday couldn’t be reached for comment through former White House aides.
The Senate’s second-ranking official, Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, and Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, echoed those concerns and called for an investigation, an indication of how the politics of intelligence continue to bedevil the CIA.
Separately, Attorney General Eric Holder is considering whether to order a criminal probe into whether treatment of terrorism detainees exceeded guidelines set by the Justice Department, administration officials said.
President Barack Obama and Mr. Holder have said they don’t favor prosecuting lawyers who wrote legal justifications for interrogation methods that the president and his attorney general have declared to be torture. They have sought to protect CIA officers who followed the legal guidelines.
“The Department of Justice will follow the facts and the law with respect to any matter,” said Matthew Miller, a department spokesman. “We have made no decisions on investigations or prosecutions, including whether to appoint a prosecutor to conduct further inquiry.” —Evan Perez and Elizabeth Williamson contributed to this article.
Why is it that no one is crying foul that Obama hasn’t denounced wiretapping and surveillance of American citizens since he got into office? He has yet to shut any of those down. I guess what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. This is just more of the two party one head smoke and mirrors act.
Talk about constitution shredding. They already want to take a carbon tax global. That means a global entity will be levying taxes on the american people. Al Gore leads the charge for global government and fascism.