News on Bush Regime Prosecution Efforts

[JackRiddler]

.

Following thanks to AnotherDreamWeaver on Tue Feb-24-09 11:54 AM at DU.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/di ... 89x5121644

(Sad truth: You won't find 911Truth.org or Justicefor911.org on the following but they are a noble coalition.)

LIST OF GROUPS PRESSING FOR
PROSECUTION OF BUSH REGIME

Dear DreamWeaver,
Voters for Peace is part of a coalition of groups seeking a special prosecutor to investigate alleged crimes committed by the Bush-Cheney administration. See statement below.

While we are looking forward to the closing of Guantanamo and steps to end torture by the U.S. government, we also need to uphold the rule of law. The United States is a nation that holds that no one is above the law. And, if war crimes were committed during the last seven years, accountability is required unless the nation is to become complicit.

This week, the first prisoner was released from Guantanamo since President Obama was elected. This British resident claimed he was brutally tortured at a covert CIA site in Morocco for 18 months. He was finally freed from Guantanamo after nearly seven years in U.S. and British captivity. Britain's Attorney General has opened an investigation into whether there was criminal wrongdoing on the part of Britain or a British security agent from MI5, who interrogated him in Pakistan. Several lawsuits are underway in the United States against a Boeing subsidiary that allegedly supplied planes for rendition flights to Morocco and for the disclosure of Bush-era legal memos on renditions and interrogation tactics. Shouldn't Attorney General Holder do the same?

Also this week, the International Commission of Jurists issued a report on counter-terrorism tactics and their impact on human rights. The highly respected Commission held 16 hearings in 40 countries in all parts of the world. The report described what it called "shocking" evidence of violations of law in the name of the "war on terror" that undermine human rights. The Commission pointed to "notorious counter-terrorism practices such as torture, disappearances, arbitrary and secret detention, unfair trials, and persistent impunity for gross human rights violations in many parts of the world." While acknowledging the need to respond to terrorism, the report notes that established law is "being questioned and at times ignored, not only by regimes whose record for doing so is well known, but also by liberal democracies that used to be in the forefront of promoting and protecting human rights" - a reference to the United States.

The world knows the U.S. government has violated international law in recent years, some Bush administration officials were open about such violations. How does the U.S. demonstrate adherence to the rule of law without investigating allegations of such violations and holding responsible those who have ignored the law?

Please urge a special prosecutor to examine these crimes as a key step to getting the United States on track to following international and domestic law. You can contact President Obama at http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact / and let him know your thoughts.

Sincerely,

Kevin B. Zeese
Executive Director
GROUPS REQUEST SPECIAL PROSECUTOR FOR BUSH, CHENEY

Statement on Prosecution of Former High Officials

We urge Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a non-partisan independent Special Counsel to immediately commence a prosecutorial investigation into the most serious alleged crimes of former President George W. Bush, former Vice President Richard B. Cheney, the attorneys formerly employed by the Department of Justice whose memos sought to justify torture, and other former top officials of the Bush Administration.

Our laws, and treaties that under Article VI of our Constitution are the supreme law of the land, require the prosecution of crimes that strong evidence suggests these individuals have committed. Both the former president and the former vice president have confessed to authorizing a torture procedure that is illegal under our law and treaty obligations. The former president has confessed to violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

We see no need for these prosecutions to be extraordinarily lengthy or costly, and no need to wait for the recommendations of a panel or "truth" commission when substantial evidence of the crimes is already in the public domain. We believe the most effective investigation can be conducted by a prosecutor, and we believe such an investigation should begin immediately.

Drafted by The Robert Jackson Steering Committee
http://afterdowningstreet.org/robertjackson

Signed By:

Center for Constitutional Rights
http://ccrjustice.org

The National Lawyers Guild
http://nlg.org

American Freedom Campaign Action Fund
http://americanfreedomcampaign.org

High Road for Human Rights Advocacy Project
http://www .
highroadforhumanrights.org


Voters for Peace
http://votersforpeace.us

After Downing Street
http://afterdowningstreet.org

Democrats.com
http://democrats.com

Gold Star Families for Peace
http://cindysheehansoapbox.com

Ann Wright, retired US Army Reserve Colonel and US diplomat

Delaware Valley Veterans for America
http://delvalvets4america.org

Wisconsin Impeachment / Bring Our Troops Home Coalition
http://impeachwi.com

Backbone Campaign
http://backbonecampaign.org

CODE PINK: Women for Peace
http://codepink4peace.org

Velvet Revolution
http://velvetrevolution.us

Justice Through Music
http://jtmp.org

Progressive Democrats of America
http://pdamerica.org

Brad Blog
http://bradblog.com

Cities for Peace
http://citiesforpeace.org

National Accountability Network

Northeast Impeachment Coalition
http://neimpeach.org

Republicans for Impeachment
http://republicansforimpeachment.com

Op Ed News
http://opednews.com

Marcus Raskin, cofounder of Institute for Policy Studies, member of editorial board of The Nation, member of the special staff of the National Security Council in Kennedy Administration

The Progressive
http://progressive.org

Peace Team
http://peaceteam.net

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
http://afterdowningstreet.org/vips

Defending Dissent Foundation
http://defendingdissent.org

Grassroots America
http://grassrootsamerica4us.org

Media Freedom Foundation/Project Censored
http://projectcensored.org

Peace Action
http://peace-action.org

Grandmothers Against the War
http://grandmothersagainstthewar.org

Tell a friend about this campaign


VotersForPeace is a nonpartisan organization that does not support or oppose candidates for office.

VotersForPeace.US

2842 N. Calvert St.

Baltimore, MD 21218

443-708-8360
_______________________________
after posting this yesterday responding to unhappycamper's post, (and it was suggested I do an original post on the subject)
(I think we need to make it uncomfortable for Obama to want to stay in the wars by Prosecuting Bush Cheney and crew)
From: activist.thepen@gmail.com
Subject: Easy New Lookup Page: Contact Your State District Attorneys To Prosecute Bush and Cheney
Date: January 26, 2009 10:56:20 AM PST
To: dreamweaver


The Best Way To Light A Fire For Federal Prosecutions of Bush And
Cheney Is To Get Collateral State Actions Going

After weeks and weeks of unbelievable work, we have completed
compiling a database of the current contact information for every
state district attorney, for EVERY county in the country. And we have
put it all together into an easy one click lookup function to help
organize contacting your nearest state prosecutor, to call on THEM to
step up to the plate, to stand up for justice and accountability, by
prosecuting George Bush and Dick Cheney for their crimes.

In particular, renowned former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi has laid
out a compelling case for charging both Bush and Cheney with the
premediated murder of American service men and women, for starting a
war with Iraq on patently false pretenses. By using this new lookup
page you can instantly get the mailing address, phone, fax, and in
many cases also the email of your local prosecutor. This action is SO
critical we have dedicated our entire main site homepage to it.

Local Prosecutor Lookup: http://www.peaceteam.net

IMPORTANT NOTE: We are not asking anyone to file a "formal" criminal
complaint yourself. Common sense tells us that a state prosecutor
will only act, in the exercise of their OWN discretion, if they
believe there is a non-frivolous case to bring. But by speaking out,
we can let them know there is community support for them to do so.

There are nearly 3,000 county level state prosecutors in the country.
And these are often VERY politically sensitive elected positions,
where citizen pressure can have huge impact. Indeed, if you look at
current members of Congress, a large number of them started out as
district attorneys. Who among these 3,000 has the courage to take on
the urgency of pressing these historic charges, and perhaps then
replace some of the partially inflated punching bags that many
members of Congress have allowed themselves to become?

To hear the Sunday morning Washington chucklehead pundits talk about
it, whether to prosecute war crimes or not (as if it were optional)
is an inside the beltway political decision. Oh really? Well maybe
our United States of America is a little bit bigger than their little
beltway.

Attorney General Holder is already coming under enormous pressure
from rabidly lawless Republicans, for just simply declaring what any
first year law student would have to say to keep from getting
flunked, that torture is a CRIME. And if Bush and Cheney ordered
torture, as they have recently brazenly admitted on TV, they MUST be
prosecuted. End of story.

But we cannot ONLY rely on getting an honest attorney general who
will do his duty (though we must have that too), nor can we rely much
on the mostly whiny weenies in Congress to finally put together an
investigation with teeth. NO!! The critical move NOW is to drum up
collateral actions at the state level, as counselled by Bugliosi, and
that will help force the hands of everyone else.

Imagine what it would be like if we found just ONE crusading state
prosecutor to respond to the call of destiny. Imagine what it would
be like if a DOZEN or more suddenly sprang into action, because of
our many letters, and phone calls, and faxes and emails. We can open
up an whole new third front, and keep it open.

We were still packing up more "Convict Dick & W" caps as we were
listening to the presidential inauguration last Tuesday. Then we got
out the first large shipment last Wednesday. And with that we
officially inaugurate the Bush and Cheney conviction movement.

Thank you for your patience. Researching thousands and thousands of
websites (where many counties have none at all), cross-checking the
best available lists, many incomplete and out of date, against hard
to find local election results, took a massive amount of energy to
create the new local prosecutor lookup function. But we had to make
it the number one priority, and now it's done, and it works like a
dream.

Local Prosecutor Lookup: http://www.peaceteam.net

So after you use the local prosecutor lookup at the page below, you
can also request one of the new "Convict Dick & W" caps from the same
page, complete with a little embroidered cowboy hat on the "W". Yes,
a tiny cowboy hat for a very small man, the Cowboy from Connecticut,
our first presidential felon to be, George Bush. It's perfect.

Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed
to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible.

If you would like to get alerts like these, you can do so at
http://www.peaceteam.net/in.htm

usalone294b:68342
_______________________________________________________________
Now, how is that going? I ordered my hat.
And there is this site: http://prosecutegeorgebush.com /
Where you can also get a DA list.
"What activity makes one an Activist?"[/quote]

[JackRiddler]

http://counterpunch.org/cohn02202009.html

Weekend Edition
February 20 / 22, 2009
And Their Lawyers, Too!
War Criminals Must be Prosecuted

By MARJORIE COHN

Since he took office, President Obama has instituted many changes that break with the policies of the Bush administration. The new president has ordered that no government agency will be allowed to torture, that the U.S. prison at Guantánamo will be shuttered, and that the CIA’s secret black sites will be closed down. But Obama is non-committal when asked whether he will seek investigation and prosecution of Bush officials who broke the law. “My view is also that nobody's above the law and, if there are clear instances of wrongdoing, that people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen,” Obama said. “But,” he added, “generally speaking, I'm more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards.” Obama fears that holding Team Bush to account will risk alienating Republicans whom he still seeks to win over.

Obama may be off the hook, at least with respect to investigating the lawyers who advised the White House on how to torture and get away with it. The Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) has written a draft report that apparently excoriates former Justice Department lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee, authors of the infamous torture memos, according to Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff. OPR can report these lawyers to their state bar associations for possible discipline, or even refer them for criminal investigation. Obama doesn’t have to initiate investigations; the OPR has already launched them, on Bush’s watch.

The smoking gun that may incriminate George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, et al., is the email traffic that passed between the lawyers and the White House. Isikoff revealed the existence of these emails on The Rachel Maddow Show. Some maintain that Bush officials are innocent because they relied in good faith on legal advice from their lawyers. But if the president and vice president told the lawyers to manipulate the law to allow them to commit torture, then that defense won’t fly.

A bipartisan report of the Senate Armed Services Committee found that “senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.”

Cheney recently admitted to authorizing waterboarding, which has long been considered torture under U.S. law. Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, George Tenet, Colin Powell, and John Ashcroft met with Cheney in the White House basement and authorized harsh interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, according to an ABC News report. When asked, Bush said he knew about it and approved.

John Yoo wrote in a Wall Street Journal oped that Bush “could even authorize waterboarding, which he did three times in the years after 9/11.”

A representative of the Justice Department promised that OPR’s report would be released sometime last November. But Mukasey objected to the draft. A final version will be presented to Attorney General Eric Holder. The administration will then have to decide whether to make it, and the emails, public and then how to proceed.

When the United States ratified the Convention Against Torture, we promised to extradite or prosecute those who commit, or are complicit in the commission, of torture. We have two federal criminal statutes for torture prosecutions – the Torture Statute and the War Crimes Act (torture is considered a war crime under U.S. law). The Torture Convention is unequivocal: nothing, including a state of war, can be invoked as a justification for torture.

Yoo redefined torture much more narrowly than U.S. law provides, and counseled the White House that it could evade prosecution under the War Crimes Act by claiming self-defense or necessity. Yoo knew or should have known of the Torture Convention’s absolute prohibition of torture.

There is precedent for holding lawyers criminally liable for giving legally erroneous advice that resulted in great physical or mental harm or death. In U.S. v. Altstoetter, Nazi lawyers were convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity for advising Hitler on how to “legally” disappear political suspects to special detention camps.

Almost two-thirds of respondents to a USA Today/Gallup Poll favor investigations of the Bush team for torture and warrantless wiretapping. Nearly four in 10 favor criminal investigations. Cong. John Conyers has introduced legislation to establish a National Commission on Presidential War Powers and Civil Liberties. Sen. Patrick Leahy advocates for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission; but this is insufficient. TRC’s are used for nascent democracies in transition. By giving immunity to those who testify before them, it would ensure that those responsible for torture, abuse and illegal spying will never be brought to justice.

Attorney General Eric Holder should appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate and prosecute high Bush officials including lawyers like John Yoo who gave them “legal” cover. Obama is correct when he said that no one is above the law. Accountability is critical to ensuring that our leaders never again torture and abuse people.

Marjorie Cohn is president of the National Lawyers Guild and author of Cowboy Republic.

[wintler2]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10562904/

Live Vote

Do you believe President Bush's actions justify impeachment?

* 720404 responses

Yes, between the secret spying, the deceptions leading to war and more, there is plenty to justify putting him on trial.
89%
No, like any president, he has made a few missteps, but nothing approaching "high crimes and misdemeanors."
4.3%
No, the man has done absolutely nothing wrong. Impeachment would just be a political lynching.
4.6%
I don't know.
2.1%

[brainpanhandler]

This:

Accountability is critical to ensuring that our leaders never again torture and abuse people.

...is exactly right. If these criminals walk away, this will happen again. Supporting the effort to assign a special prosecutor to investigate the crimes of the former administration is not "looking back", rather it is looking forward.

[JackRiddler]

.

Kyle "Dusty" Foggo. Here's a criminal within national security operations actually getting a sentence - truncated thanks to the special privileges granted to CIA criminals (see below). In part because the conviction relates to crimes of personal corruption, rather than crimes committed with a policy rationale, and this at SAD, the infamous CIA department that performs renditions: "raids, ambushes, abductions and other difficult chores overseas, including infiltrating countries to 'light up' targets from the ground for air-to-ground missile strikes." But even if prosecutors were empowered only to go after corrupt contract awards in the military-intel realm, it might bring an enormous number of perps to task.

Now don't laugh at the Onion-style headline.

Justice
Corruption Touched CIA’s Covert Operations

by Marcus Stern, ProPublica - February 25, 2009 12:00 am EST



Above is a never-before-published picture of the wine locker at the Capitol Grille that defense contractor Brent R. Wilkes shared with Kyle Dusty Foggo when Foggo was the executive director of the CIA and illegally steering contracts to Wilkes. Wilkes paid for many expensive meals for Foggo at the restaurant. (Photo by Jerry Kammer)

Paramilitary agents for the CIA's super-secret Special Activities Division, or SAD, perform raids, ambushes, abductions and other difficult chores overseas, including infiltrating countries to "light up" targets from the ground for air-to-ground missile strikes. This week the government acknowledged for the first time that some of SAD's sensitive air operations were swept up in a fraud conspiracy that reached the highest levels of the CIA and cost the government $40 million.

That information was contained in a series of court filings [1] released in advance of the long-awaited sentencing of Kyle Dustin "Dusty" Foggo, the disgraced former No. 3 official at the CIA.

One remarkable affidavit came from a leader of SAD, a branch of the CIA's National Clandestine Service, which handles covert actions. It indicates that Foggo forced SAD to use a shell company set up by defense contractor Brent R. Wilkes to handle its sensitive air operations, even though Wilkes and his company had no experience in clandestine aviation operations.

Wilkes was Foggo's boyhood friend and a co-conspirator in the bribery scandal that erupted around former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, who is serving more than eight years in federal prison.

Since the 9/11 terror strikes, SAD's role in the war on terror has become more prominent. Its paramilitary operatives have been used to snatch high-value suspects from the streets of foreign countries for rendition to black sites for interrogation. When carrying out their operations in other countries, the agents typically do not wear uniforms or carry items that connect them to the U.S. government. If they are caught, the government may disavow any connection to them.

(We pretend this is a democracy and a republic. Once such a policy is allowed in secret and lavishly pre-funded, notions of civilian control are rendered unviable and abuse is preprogrammed. But let's get back to the personal enrichment.)

Foggo's sentencing, scheduled Thursday before Judge James C. Cacheris in U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Va., will be the final sentencing of the ring of co-defendants in the bribery scandal that erupted around Cunningham.

Foggo, 53, was running the CIA on a day-to-day basis until he resigned in 2006 after his name surfaced in the scandal. At first, Foggo sought to have the charges against him dismissed. When that failed, he argued that he would need to disclose classified information to defend himself. This practice, sometimes referred to as graymail, was rejected by the court, but led prosecutors to drop 27 of the 28 charges against him.

Sigh. Who figures Foggo was threatening to expose stuff that was more criminal and dangerous than the machinations for which he will now be briefly jailed?

In September, Foggo pleaded guilty to a single count of defrauding the government of his "honest services" by steering contracts to Wilkes. While Cacheris could sentence Foggo to up to 20 years in prison, the plea agreement calls for 37 months behind bars. Foggo is seeking an even more lenient sentence from the judge.

In the days leading up to the sentencing, prosecutors have sought the release of transcripts from grand jury proceedings that they believe will be helpful in opposing a reduced sentence. The flurry of motions and counter-motions resulted in the release of a trove of documents Monday, including the affidavit from one of SAD's leaders.

In the affidavit, in which he is identified as "John Doe # 1," the official says Foggo introduced Wilkes to him and other SAD officials as "someone who had an extensive corporate portfolio that included experience in aviation, and for that reason could assist SAD. Mr. Foggo then left Wilkes with us to discuss our need for cover for our air operations."

Within days, Wilkes provided the group with a $132 million proposal that John Doe # 1 described as "unwieldy, cumbersome, and lacking a real understanding of what the Agency needed...If implemented as presented, I believed the proposals would be wasteful, misguided, and contrived."

Hm. If it encumbers the renditions program or other approved barbarisms, should we consider corruption a good thing? Cockburn's often made remarks along these lines...

Nonetheless, Foggo ordered them to proceed quickly. "The rapid decision by Mr. Foggo and the urgent deadlines he imposed on the program mean that we necessarily had to use Mr. Wilkes for the Enhanced Capability, because he was the only option available to us at the time," the official testified. Despite misgivings about the directive coming from Foggo, "we saluted and carried out his orders."

The plan was derailed in August 2005 after Wilkes' and Foggo's roles in the Cunningham scandal surfaced, but not before it had cost the government $40 million in planning expenses, according to the documents.

"Upon being apprised of this, I was greatly relieved that we would not have to proceed with the cover solution with Wilkes, and would have more time to explore the best possible solution," John Doe #1 wrote.

The documents also argue that Wilkes and Foggo tried to incorporate the military's need for armored vehicles into an array of contracts that involved not only the CIA's sensitive air operations but also water for troops in Iraq. Wilkes' and Foggo's deals -- during which they hid their long, personal friendship from other government officials -- included markups of up to 60 percent on the goods and services they sold the CIA.

I usually say, "the plunder never ends," but today I have to also add, ironically: If you didn't know the upshot would be urgent budget rises to ensure all shortfalls are covered, would it be so wrong to deprive the CIA's SAD program of resources?

The documents released Monday provide extensive details about Foggo's efforts to move his mistress from Europe to Langley when he was promoted in November 2004 from chief of support at an undisclosed European location to the agency's No. 3 post, executive director.

Bushism at its zenith.

According to prosecutors and testimony included in the filing, Foggo arranged for his family to remain in Europe at taxpayer expense while he moved to Langley. He then arranged a CIA job for his mistress, identified only by the initials ER. At first the CIA ruled that ER was ineligible for employment because a background check found that she had an improper relationship with a superior in her previous government position and had destroyed evidence being sought by the inspector general of that agency.

Foggo summoned the agency's managing associate general counsel to his office and insisted that the woman's service was vital and she must be hired, without disclosing his romantic relationship with ER, according to the documents. ER was hired, but her supervisor soon found her work unsatisfactory.

"Instead of being receptive to her supervisor's critiques and suggestions, ER made it clear that she had influence with Foggo. Indeed, she did," the prosecutors' sentencing memo states. "Her supervisor had been an attorney with the (CIA's Office of General Counsel) for 20 years, during which time she received numerous performance awards and even the Career Intelligence Medal, which rewards 'exceptional achievements that substantially contributed to the mission of the Agency' over the course of her career. Within months of crossing Foggo's mistress, however, she suffered a humiliating firing by Foggo."

Tangential but the juiciest details again left out: what were the supervisor's "exceptional achievements"? Not for us to know, or probably even most of her fellow CIA personnel.

The government's 24-page reply to Foggo's sentencing memorandum, 31-page sentencing memo and 82-page appendix are full of such previously undisclosed material.

Calls to the offices of the prosecutors and Foggo's defense attorneys weren't returned on Tuesday.

ProPublica Director of Research Lisa Schwartz contributed to this report.

Tags: Brent Wilkes, CIA, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, Randy "Duke" Cunningham

Government's reply to Defendant's sentencing memo (24 p)
http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/asse ... _138_1.pdf

Prosecutors' sentencing memo (31 p)
http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/asse ... _139_1.pdf

Appendix including affidavits and exhibits (81 p)
http://s3.amazonaws.com/propublica/asse ... _139_2.pdf

[JackRiddler]

.

FOGGO IS A START

Unfortunately, the court cut a deal that serves to disguise more systemic atrocities. As I read it, he was caught unmistakably on the take for personal gain, lacking higher clearance, and also hated at the CIA as deputy to the unpopular Goss. He saved himself by graymail, threatening both his CIA colleagues and the prosecution, which incredibly yielded and offered a radically reduced sentence in exchange for his not testifying. Real justice requires a tribunal that indeed would have reduced his sentence, but for his testimony against the rest of his crew at CIA and in the Bush regime, and not as a trade for his protection of a criminal conspiracy, in no less than the name of "national security."

.

Foggo is the rot in the "ship of state."

The biggest problem is not in the rot, which is symptomatic, but in the functions and destinations, which in this civilization and country I believe is described best by concepts like: capital, empire, class war, corporatism, and covert power (deep state or parapolitics). All of which are to varying degrees bipartisan consensus. As well as the usually unspeakable traditions of patriarchy and racism (the systems and legacy, not the personal prejudices). Where the Democrats have the better record in the modern era, no doubt!

.

[StarmanSkye]

Word-uP!, Jack;

Further, my sense is that the systemic rot which follows the normalized business-as-usual rationale that 'a little personal-gain fraud and taxpayer-subsidized benefits-and-privelege' is SOP given that 'I'm such a vitally important and qualified person, as evidenced by my appointment to a critical position' (circular 'logic') is the inevitable result of the insider-coverup of the JFK-coup and the murder of Robert Kennedy and MLK. For over 60 years now since the US 'won' WWII, the US state and legions of politicians, state and military officials and intelligence agencies,with connivance of economic elites and corporate & financial officials, have routinely committed enormous frauds and crimes both domestically and internationally; I think these past and present elites that have waged illegal wars and plundered whole nations, subverted American principles of law and justice and instituted debt-peonage while sabotaging the independence and economic development of much of the third world, have been encouraged to think the are, indeed, indispensible to our 'American way of life' and so are above he law.

Foggo's quick reliance on 'national security' blackmail should have resulted in an immediate, automatic and extremely harsh penalty being applied as an object lesson to anyone else who thinks they can subvert justice, especially when it comes to the serious crimes of abuse of power and betraying their public office. 10-20 years imprisonment on top of any other sentence wouldn't be too inappropriate I don't think, esp. considering how their crimes seriously undermine American security and government's integrity. As long as elite criminals are protected and in the rare instances they are prosecuted they are coddled, there's little disincentive for political, economic and corporate officials to clean up their act.

Bu here I'm obviously speaking in idealistic and absract terms -- I don't think the present system is salvageable -- the rot and corruption and systemic crimes are too serious and too widespread to be 'fixed', as witness the appaling idiocy of rewarding criminally-mismanaged banks with trillions of dollars of guarantees being made with public funds, with NO real benefit given to struggling homeowners. Language itself has been subverted, witness the meaning of 'free markets' now standing for the opposite of what it originally described. Congress has knuckled under to economic blackmail, the 'plan' being to 'SOLVE' the banking crisis by reinflating property values instead of allowing insolvent banks to fail and shareholders and bondholders taking a loss on their high-risk investments.

As far as that goes -- the overhead due to central banks going to private owners and shareholders instead of the public sharing the utility benefits and profits of state-run banking authority is absolutely ludicrous -- as stupid as the false 'economy' of privatizing military and military-support services.

Buncha GD crooks ...

[JackRiddler]

.

Good comment all around, Starman.

I don't believe Foggo was going to spill any "national security" secrets, unless copping to your atrocities harms national security. It was a threat to roll on the other bastards, so they let him off and he even gets to live, since he's a club member. It's really shocking, or might have shocked me 10 years ago. Back then I thought the system was totally corrupt and able to commit most any atrocity abroad, but vulnerable to shocking domestic revelations. I would not have imagined a Foggo could publicly threaten the prosecutors and the CIA itself and promptly get a reduced sentence, and have this completely ignored by most of the media. Maybe things have gotten worse because of the overload effect.

So check out the following and tell me what to make of it.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/ ... index.html

Glenn Greenwald
Wednesday Feb. 25, 2009 14:44 EST
Pelosi criticizes Truth Commission as inadequate, advocates criminal prosecutions

(updated below)

This directly relates to the post I wrote earlier about Mark Benjamin's report that the Senate Judiciary Committee appear to be on the verge of creating a "Truth Commission" to investigate Bush crimes, but this is newsworthy in its own right, and so I wanted to highlight it separately:

In an interview today with Rachel Maddow -- to be broadcast on Maddow's MSNBC show tonight (and transcripts of which I've obtained) -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi repeatedly advocated the need for criminal prosecutions, not merely fact-finding. She even directly criticized the proposal by Sen. Pat Leahy for a "Truth Commission," on the ground that such a Commission would improperly immunize lawbreakers and thus foreclose prosecutions:

MADDOW: This is something that liberals have really been pushing. And you have stated your support for John Conyers convening an investigation into potential lawbreaking in the Bush administration.

PELOSI: Absolutely.

MADDOW: You've been outspoken about contempt of Congress charges related to the politicization of the Justice Department and that investigation. You have been less specific about how Congress should proceed on warrantless wiretapping and torture. Why is that? . . .

PELOSI: Senator Leahy has a proposal, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which is a good idea. What I have some concern about though is it has immunity. And I think that some of the issues involved here, like the services part, politicizing of the Justice Department, and the rest, they have criminal ramifications, and I don't think we should be giving them immunity.

Pelosi then acknowledged that the FISA bill passed by Congress in 2008 was flawed in many important respects, but said that the "part of the bill that was positive" was the requirement that the Justice Department's Inspector General investigate the NSA eavesdropping program and issue a report (due this Summer) as to the scope and legality of Bush's eavesdropping. About that comment, Maddow asked Pelosi whether she would favor criminal prosecutions if, as many people expect, the IG Report concludes that the warrantless eavesdropping was illegal:

MADDOW: Then in terms of your report, if the inspector general report that comes out this summer suggests that there has been criminal activity at the official level on issues like torture, or wireless wiretapping, or rendition, or any of these other issues...

PELOSI: No one is above the law. I think I have said that.

MADDOW: ... you support a call for a criminal investigation, potential investigation.

PELOSI: Absolutely.

That's pretty definitive.

Maddow then repeatedly, and rather relentlessly, asked Pelosi about how much she was told about the Bush's use of torture and about the warrantless eavesdropping program and whether her having known about those programs was an obstacle to investigations and prosecutions. Pelosi's answers were largely evasive, but she was very emphatic -- I believe for the first time -- in claiming that while she was told by the CIA about potential "enhanced interrogation techniques" in "the abstract," she was never told that these techniques were actually being used. She also claimed that she put up "very strong resistance" to the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program (I've never seen any evidence of such resistance at all; the only letter from Pelosi that was disclosed was one from October, 2001, which merely raised a concern over whether the NSA had presidential authorization for the program, not whether the program itself was illegal). But what matters here is that Pelosi insists that nothing she nor any other Democrat knew or did poses an obstacle in any way to full-scale criminal investigations.

This is the kind of debate and dispute that it is good to see in the Democratic caucus and that will hopefully grow -- a debate between those (such as Leahy, Whitehouse and Conyers) who first want a "Truth Commission" to disclose Bush crimes and those (such as Pelosi, apparently) who believe that such a body is inadequate if it does not explicitly preserve the possibility of criminal prosecutions for high Bush officials and, in some circumstances (such as a finding by the IG that laws were broken), if it does not guarantee such an outcome. It will be interesting to hear what Whitehouse, Leahy and Conyers have to say about Pelosi's criticisms of their proposed "Truth Commission." I'll post any comment I can get from them.



UPDATE: Here is a response I received to Pelosi's comments from Erica Chabot of Pat Leahy's office:

Senator Leahy gave a statement on the Senate Floor today on his ideas for a Commission of Inquiry. He also announced a Judiciary Committee hearing on the subject to be held next Wednesday. He mentions prosecutions in this statement. I have pasted it below for your reference.

I linked to the text of Leahy's speech earlier today (here). The only argument he really makes against prosecutions is that "a failed attempt to prosecute for this conduct might be the worst result of all if it is seen as justifying abhorrent actions." That's true for every prosecution. Why continue to prosecute suspected murderers? After all, they might be acquitted, and that could be seen as "justifying abhorrent actions." Moreover, as is true for every prosecution, before doing anything, prosecutors would gather and then carefully review all of the evidence, and thereafter assess the likelihood of conviction and only bring charges if there is a substantial likelihood of success.

Ultimately, while Whitehouse and Conyers are proposing a Truth Commission with the explicit possibility of subsequent prosecutions, and Pelosi is arguing for prosecutions now, Leahy's overt argument against prosecutions -- no matter what his "Truth Commission" finds -- is nothing more than an attempt, by definition, to place the President above and beyond the rule of law. Whether she's sincere or not about it, it's at least good (and potentially productive) to see Pelosi being critical of such a lawless posture from the Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman.

-- Glenn Greenwald

Who, if anyone in this maneuvering (or is it only posturing?) should I believe actually means to do something righteous? Of course I prefer prosecution, but when Pelosi says it I figure it's going to be another three-year wait on:

Damn! Coals for Fitzmas Again!

My feeling is Leahy might know what he's doing: bring out the shit first, soon as possible, even granting immunity to some of the perps, the unspoken part being to stir the public outrage to the point where prosecution of bigger fish becomes inevitable.

[JackRiddler]

.

(thanks to ultramegagenius)

Convicted CIA Official Was Suspected of Sharing Woman with Russian Mole

By Jeff Stein | February 26, 2009 3:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Kyle "Dusty" Foggo's CIA dossier included allegations that he was sharing a woman with a suspected Russian mole, according to a top former spy agency official and other sources.

CIA Director Porter J. Goss knew about the allegation when he hired Foggo to be the agency's executive director, its third highest official, an aide said Thursday.


But Merrell Moorhead, an aide to Goss at the CIA from 2004 to 2006, said CIA security officials later withdrew that and other serious allegations about Foggo's record and "gave him a clean bill of health."

Foggo was sentenced Thursday to three years in prison on a single count of fraud as part of a plea bargain. He is the highest-ranking CIA officer ever to be convicted of a federal felony.

Foggo's misdeeds, stretching back over 20 years, were legendary, say prosecutors and former CIA officials, some of whom provided affidavits to the court. But evidently none of it swayed Goss from hiring him as his executive director.

Part of Foggo's colorful past was a well-earned reputation for womanizing. He often had affairs with the wives of colleagues in embassies where he was posted abroad, former associates and prosecutors say.

For years it was rumored that Foggo was sharing a woman with Felix Bloch, a suspected Russian mole in the State Department.

In some versions, the woman was Bloch's girlfriend. In others, the woman was a prostitute in Vienna with a specialty in sadomasochism.

The Russians used the relationship to blackmail Bloch into spying for them, U.S. counterintelligence agents suspected at the time. Bloch was closely surveilled, stripped of his security clearance and eventually fired, but he was never charged with espionage.

"Everybody knew about him and Felix," said a former senior CIA official, who talked about Foggo on condition of anonymity. "It's scandalous that Goss hired him."

Moorhead said Goss and his team learned about Foggo's alleged involvement with Bloch and a woman from Foggo's dossier in September or October of 2004, shortly after arriving at headquarters and firing then then-executive director.

"He was alleged to have dated some girlfriend of Felix Bloch," Moorhead said in a telephone interview. "That was in there."

After reviewing that and other misdeeds in Foggo's dossier, Moorhead said he wondered, "Why is this person still here?"

He said he and other Goss staffers asked CIA security and counterintelligence officials about Bloch and the girlfriend and multiple other allegations of wrongdoing by Foggo.

The officials, Moorhead maintains, reported back that "none of it was substantiated, we're taking it all back."

CIA security officials told Goss that a State Department official whose wife had been bedded by Foggo might have concocted the allegation.

He was cleared for hiring.

Moorhead said Thursday that Foggo had been "recommended" for the job by Brant Bassett, a fellow Goss aide.

Bassett had previously worked with Foggo at the CIA. At some point he left to work for the House Intelligence Committee when Goss, a Florida Republican, was its chairman. He returned to the CIA with Goss in 2004.
Bassett was close friends with Foggo from their time in the agency. He was also friends with Brent Wilkes, the San Diego defense contractor who is alleged to have bribed California Republican Rep. Randall "Duke" Cunningham, now doing time for accepting bribes from Wilkes for defense contracts.

According to congressional records uncovered in 2006 by Talking Points Memo, Bassett received a $5,000 "consulting" fee before joining the committee.

Moorhead, backed by some others familiar with the situation, insist that CIA security and counterintelligence officials gave Foggo a pass on his sexual peccadilloes -- "boys-will-be-boys" -- as well as other blots on his records.

He also noted that Foggo had passed a CIA polygraph test about items in his dossier.
Nevertheless, he and other Goss staff closely questioned Foggo.

"He lied repeatedly to us, to our face," Moorhead said.

The Goss team was under tremendous time pressure to hire someone for the executive director's office. A previous pick had been jettisoned when CIA insiders leaked that he had a shoplifting arrest on his record.

The Goss team also thought it wouldn't matter much whom they picked, since Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., the Democrats' presidential candidate, was "certain" to win the election and they would all soon be gone.

No CIA security officials at the time could be reached immediately for comment.###

Jeff Stein can be reached at jstein@cq.com.

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/spytalk/200 ... s-sus.html

[JackRiddler]

http://www.truthout.org/022709J

Senate to Investigate CIA's Actions Under Bush

Friday 27 February 2009

»

by: Greg Miller, The Los Angeles Times




The Obama adminsitration's CIA director, Leon Panetta. (Photo: AP)




"Fact-finding" effort seeks details on secret prisons and interrogation methods.

Washington - The Senate Intelligence Committee is preparing to launch an investigation of the CIA's detention and interrogation programs under President Bush, setting the stage for a sweeping examination of some of most secretive and controversial operations in recent agency history.

The probe is aimed at uncovering new information on the origins of the programs as well as scrutinizing how they were executed -- from the conditions at clandestine CIA prison sites to the interrogation regimens used to break Al Qaeda prisoners, according to Senate aides familiar with the inquiry plans.

Officials said the inquiry is not designed to determine whether CIA officials broke laws. "The purpose here is to do fact-finding in order to learn lessons from the programs and see if there are recommendations to be made for detention and interrogations in the future," said a senior Senate aide, who like others, described the plans on condition of anonymity because they have not been made public.

Still, the investigation is likely call new attention to the agency's conduct in operations that drew condemnation around the world. It is also bound to renew friction between Democrats and Republicans who have spent much of the last five years fighting over the Bush administration's prosecution of the war on terrorism.

The investigation also could draw comparisons to the special Senate committee formed to investigate the CIA in 1975 and headed by Sen. Frank Church, an Idaho Democrat. Revelations by the Church Committee led to greater congressional oversight and legislation restricting intelligence activities.

The terms and scope of the new inquiry still were being negotiated by members of the committee and senior staffers Thursday. The senior aide said the committee had no short-term plans to hold public hearings, and that it was not clear whether the panel would release its final report to the public.

The inquiry, which could take a year or more to complete, means the CIA will once again be the target of intense congressional scrutiny at a time when it is engaged in two wars and its ongoing pursuit of Al Qaeda.

The agency was been stripped of some of its power and prestige after coming under severe criticism in previous investigations of its failures leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks and the war in Iraq.

But whereas those investigations focused largely on errors in the CIA's analytic efforts, the new probe will dive directly into its most sensitive operations, seeking to unearth details that previous generations of agency officials referred to as the "crown jewels."

During the Bush administration, the agency was often able to safeguard many of those secrets. Lawmakers have never been told the locations of the CIA's secret prisons overseas, for example.

But the Obama administration is expected to give congressional investigators new access to classified records as well as individuals who took part in operating the secret prisons and interrogating detainees.

CIA Director Leon E. Panetta pledged this week that he would cooperate with any congressional probe.

"If those committees are seeking information in these areas, we'll cooperate with them," Panetta said in a meeting with reporters Wednesday. "I think that we have a responsibility to be transparent on these issues and to provide them that information."

Panetta argued that CIA officers should not face prosecution if they were acting on orders in accordance with Bush administration legal opinions.

"I would not support, obviously, an investigation or a prosecution of those individuals," Panetta said. "I think they did their job, they did it pursuant to the guidance that was provided them, whether you agreed or disagreed with it."

News of the probe was greeted with concern among agency veterans.

"There is a good deal of investigation fatigue, and a feeling that the agency has become even more than before a piata," said a former high-ranking CIA official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The new investigation is likely to "stimulate more risk aversion," the former official said. "There's a potential cost to other operations down the road when the current administration says, 'We would like you to take this operation, it's been blessed by lawyers and briefed by Congress.' Why should we do anything anywhere near cutting-edge if down the road the next administration can decide to get back at their political opponents?"

Senate aides declined to say whether the committee would seek new testimony from former CIA Director George J. Tenet or other former top officials who were involved in the creation and management of the programs.

The Senate probe will examine whether the detention and interrogation operations were carried out in ways that were consistent with the authorities and instructions issued in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, officials said.

The panel will also look at whether lawmakers were kept fully informed. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the committee, and others have said that the Bush administration improperly withheld information from Congress on the CIA's operations.

The investigation comes at a time when the Obama administration is in the midst of making dramatic changes in the CIA's counter-terrorism programs.

Last month, Obama ordered the CIA to close its secret prison facilities and to abandon "enhanced" interrogation measures, including waterboarding, a method that simulates drowning. Instead, Obama ordered the agency to abide by the Army Field Manual on interrogation.

The administration has also established a task force to look at the interrogation programs, although that effort is mainly designed to examine their effectiveness and determine whether the CIA should again be granted authority beyond the Army Field Manual.

Senate investigators plan a similar line of inquiry, with a goal of assessing the effectiveness of enhanced interrogation techniques employed by the CIA, including sleep deprivation and subjecting prisoners to cold temperatures.

Former CIA Director Michael V. Hayden has defended the agency's use of such methods and argued that the agency should not be bound by the constraints of the Army Field Manual.

Hayden has said that the agency had held fewer than 100 prisoners in custody since the Sept. 11 attacks, and that less than one-third of those were ever subjected to enhanced interrogation measures. Three prisoners, including self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, were subjected to waterboarding.

There has also been a push from other lawmakers to launch an independent investigation of the CIA's operations. The Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled a hearing next week on a proposal to create a commission like the one that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks to examine CIA counter-terrorism operations under Bush.

"The last administration justified torture, presided over the abuses at Abu Ghraib, destroyed tapes of harsh interrogations," said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the chairman of that committee. "How can we restore our moral leadership and ensure transparent government if we ignore what has happened?"

But the Senate Intelligence Committee has direct jurisdiction over U.S. spy agencies, and is launching its probe in part to make sure its members have independent data and are in position to influence future interrogation and detention policies, officials said.

Aides said the negotiations were aimed at producing a probe with broad support from members of both parties. Republicans have argued that the investigation be focused on CIA programs and not become a referendum on Bush administration policies, such as the Justice Department legal memos that underpinned the program.

Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.), the ranking Republican on the committee, "does not think that witch hunts and discussions of the legality of [Justice Department] memos are in any way helpful at this point," another Senate aide said.

»

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[JackRiddler]

http://911truth.org/article.php?story=20090227132311130

Obama administration backs Bush, tries to kill 'lost' White House emails lawsuit

2/22/2009
RAW STORY

Missing email includes day Cheney's office told to preserve emails in CIA leak case

WASHINGTON -- Welcome to change.

The Obama administration, siding with former President George W. Bush, is trying to kill a lawsuit that seeks to recover what could be millions of missing White House e-mails in a stunning reversal of Obama's rhetoric about Bush secrecy on the campaign trail.

Two advocacy groups suing the Executive Office of the President, including one of the groups that helped derail former House Speaker Tom DeLay, say that large amounts of White House e-mail documenting Bush's eight years in office may still be missing, and that the government must undertake an extensive recovery effort. They expressed disappointment that Obama's Justice Department is continuing the Bush administration's bid to get the lawsuits dismissed.

During its first term, the Bush White House failed to install electronic record-keeping for e-mail when it switched to a new system, allegedly resulting in millions of messages that could not be found.

The Bush White House "discovered the problem" in 2005 and rejected a proposed solution.

The exact number of missing e-mails is unknown, but several days on which e-mails were not archived covered key dates in a Justice Department inquiry into the roles of Vice President Dick Cheney and his aides in leaking the identity of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson.

Ironically, Cheney's office is missing emails from the very day President Bush told reporters he'd "take care of" whatever staff member had actually leaked the CIA agent's name.

"If there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is," Bush said Sept. 30, 2003. "And if the person has violated the law, the person will be taken care of."

No e-mails were archived on the very day the probe was announced and White House officials were ordered to maintain anything that could become evidence in the investigation that ended the conviction of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff, on perjury and obstruction of justice charges.

Emails are missing from at least some of 473 days of Bush's presidency.



Obama administration continues Bush White House effort to kill e-mail case

PETE YOST
AP News
Feb 21, 2009

The Obama administration, siding with former President George W. Bush, is trying to kill a lawsuit that seeks to recover what could be millions of missing White House e-mails.

Two advocacy groups suing the Executive Office of the President say that large amounts of White House e-mail documenting Bush's eight years in office may still be missing, and that the government must undertake an extensive recovery effort. They expressed disappointment that Obama's Justice Department is continuing the Bush administration's bid to get the lawsuits dismissed.

During its first term, the Bush White House failed to install electronic record-keeping for e-mail when it switched to a new system, resulting in millions of messages that could not be found.

The Bush White House discovered the problem in 2005 and rejected a proposed solution.

Recently, the Bush White House said it had located 14 million e-mails that were misplaced and that the White House had restored hundreds of thousands of other e-mails from computer backup tapes.

The steps the White House took are inadequate, one of the two groups, the National Security Archive, told a federal judge in court papers filed Friday.

"We do not know how many more e-mails could be restored but have not been, because defendants have not looked," the National Security Archive said in the court papers.

"The new administration seems no more eager than the last" to deal with the issue, said Anne Weismann, chief counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the other group that sued the EOP.

The Executive Office of the President includes the president's immediate staff and many White House offices and agencies.

Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, noted that President Barack Obama on his first full day in office called for greater transparency in government.

The Justice Department "apparently never got the message" from Obama, Blanton said.

The department defends the government when it is sued.

Source: AP News

Source URL: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Obama_adm ... 22_af.html

[JackRiddler]

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N02424244.htm

Bush-era memos saw rights limits in US terror war
02 Mar 2009 23:49:14 GMT
Source: Reuters
* Memo said anti-terrorism fight had priority over rights

* Advice was disavowed in later Justice Dept. ruling

* ACLU says memos mean presidential "blank check" in wartime

* May bolster calls for Bush security "truth commission"

By Randall Mikkelsen

WASHINGTON, March 2 (Reuters) - The U.S. military could have kicked in doors to raid a suspected terrorist cell in the United States without a warrant under a Bush-era legal memo the Justice Department made public on Monday.

The memo, from Oct. 23, 2001, also said constitutional free-speech protections and a prohibition on unreasonable search and seizure could take a back seat to military needs in fighting terrorism inside the country.

It was one of nine previously undisclosed memos and legal opinions which shed light on former U.S. President George W. Bush's legal guidance as he launched a war against terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks.

"The government's compelling interests in wartime justify restrictions on the scope of individual liberty," it said.

Other memos held that the president had broad power to detain U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism and to suspend treaty obligations on issues as seen fit.

The memos depict an administration apparently determined to assert sweeping powers for the president after the shock of Sept. 11, and add fuel to critics' charges that fundamental constitutional protections were threatened in the process.

"The current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically," Justice Department officials John Yoo and Robert Delahunty wrote White House counsel Alberto Gonzales in the Oct. 23 memo.

"We do not think that a military commander carrying out a raid on a terrorist cell would be required to demonstrate probable cause or to obtain a (search) warrant," they said.

The U.S. Supreme Court has held that the Constitution's Fourth Amendment ordinarily requires a probable cause and a warrant to execute a search. However, the memo said those requirements "are unsuited to the demands of wartime."

Furthermore, it said, "First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully."

The Justice Department under Bush had fought a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union which sought to make that and other the legal memos public.

"These memos essentially argue that the president has a blank check to disregard the Constitution during wartime," said Jameel Jaffer, national security director for the ACLU.

The memos could also increase Democratic calls for wide investigations to shed light on Bush's security practices, such as a "truth commission" proposed by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy. Leahy said they help illustrate Bush's "misguided national security policies."

Bush's Justice Department disavowed the early advice in a final memo dated days before U.S. President Barack Obama took office, and Obama later declared all of the memos invalid.

The Jan. 15, 2009 memo from the Bush department's Office of Legal Counsel said: "The following propositions contained in the opinions .... do not currently reflect, and have not for some years reflected, the views of the OLC."

It said the counsel's office had not relied on the opinions since 2003 "and on several occasions we have already acknowledged the doubtful nature of these propositions."

The memos' release was the latest move in the Obama administration's swift repudiation of many of Bush's counterterrorism policies, which have been criticized by U.S. allies and advocates of human rights and civil liberties.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said he intended to release future legal counsel opinions when possible, "while still protecting national security information and ensuring robust internal executive branch debate and decision-making."

The ACLU welcomed the decision to make the documents public but said it hoped this was the first step in a broader release. (Editing by Eric Walsh)

http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/documents/olc-memos.htm

Office of Legal Counsel Memoranda

Memorandum Regarding Status of Certain OLC Opinions Issued in the Aftermath of the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 (01-15-2009)

Memorandum Regarding Constitutionality of Amending Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to Change the "Purpose" Standard for Searches (09-25-2001)

Memorandum Regarding Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities within the United States (10-23-2001)

Memorandum Regarding Authority of the President to Suspend Certain Provisions of the ABM Treaty (11-15-2001)

Memorandum Regarding the President's Power as Commander in Chief to Transfer Captured Terrorists to the Control and Custody of Foreign Nations (03-13-2002)

Memorandum Regarding Swift Justice Authorization Act (04-08-2002)

Memorandum Regarding Determination of Enemy Belligerency and Military Detention (06-08-2002)

Memorandum Regarding Applicability of 18 U.S.C. § 4001(a) to Military Detention of United States Citizens (06-27-2002)

Memorandum Regarding October 23, 2001 OLC Opinion Addressing the Domestic Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities (10-06-2008)

[JackRiddler]

.

http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/nj ... 30309.html

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 3, 2009
Contact: Zach Goldberg
202-225-5801 (office)
HOLT INTRODUCES ANTHRAX COMMISSION LEGISLATION
Bill Would Create 9/11 Commission-Style Panel to Investigate
Anthrax Attacks and Government Response

(Washington, D.C.) – Rep. Rush Holt (NJ-12) today introduced the Anthrax Attacks Investigation Act of 2009, legislation that would establish a Congressional commission to investigate the 2001 anthrax attacks and the federal government’s response to and investigation of the attacks. The bipartisan commission would make recommendations to the President and Congress on how the country can best prevent and respond to any future bioterrorism attack. The attacks evidently originated from a postal box in Holt’s Central New Jersey congressional district, disrupting the lives and livelihoods of many of his constituents. Holt has consistently raised questions about the federal investigation into the attacks.

“All of us – but especially the families of the victims of the anthrax attacks – deserve credible answers about how the attacks happened and whether the case really is closed,” Holt said. “The Commission, like the 9/11 Commission, would do that, and it would help American families know that the government is better prepared to protect them and their children from future bioterrorism attacks.”

Under Holt’s legislation, the commission would be comprised of no more than six members of from the same political party. The commission would hold public hearings, except in situations where classified information would be discussed. The commission would have to consult the National Academies of Sciences for recommendations on scientific staff to serve on the Commission. The Commission’s final report would be due 18 months after the Commission begins operations.

“Myriad questions remain about the anthrax attacks and the government’s bungled response to the attacks,” Holt said. “One of the most effective oversight mechanisms we can employ to get answers to those questions is a 9/11 style Commission.”

[JackRiddler]

March 4, 2009
The Yoo-Bybee Memoranda
Blueprints for a Police State

By MARJORIE COHN

Seven newly released memos from the Bush Justice Department reveal a concerted strategy to cloak the President with power to override the Constitution. The memos provide “legal” rationales for the President to suspend freedom of speech and press; order warrantless searches and seizures, including wiretaps of U.S. citizens; lock up U.S. citizens indefinitely in the United States without criminal charges; send suspected terrorists to other countries where they will likely be tortured; and unilaterally abrogate treaties. According to the reasoning in the memos, Congress has no role to check and balance the executive. That is the definition of a police state.

Who wrote these memos? All but one were crafted in whole or in part by the infamous John Yoo and Jay Bybee, authors of the so-called “torture memos” that redefined torture much more narrowly than the U.S. definition of torture, and counseled the President how to torture and get away with it. In one memo, Yoo said the Justice Department would not enforce U.S. laws against torture, assault, maiming and stalking, in the detention and interrogation of enemy combatants.

What does the federal maiming statute prohibit? It makes it a crime for someone "with the intent to torture, maim, or disfigure" to "cut, bite, or slit the nose, ear or lip, or cut out or disable the tongue, or put out or destroy an eye, or cut off or disable a limb or any member of another person." It further prohibits individuals from "throwing or pouring upon another person any scalding water, corrosive acid, or caustic substance" with like intent.

The two torture memos were later withdrawn after they became public because their legal reasoning was clearly defective. But they remained in effect long enough to authorize the torture and abuse of many prisoners in U.S. custody.

The seven memos just made public were also eventually disavowed, several years after they were written. Steven Bradbury, the Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in Bush’s Department of Justice, issued two disclaimer memos – on October 6, 2008 and January 15, 2009 – that said the assertions in those seven memos did “not reflect the current views of this Office.” Why Bradbury waited until Bush was almost out of office to issue the disclaimers remains a mystery. Some speculate that Bradbury, knowing the new administration would likely release the memos, was trying to cover his backside.

Indeed, Yoo, Bybee and Bradbury are the three former Justice Department lawyers that the Office of Professional Responsibility singled out for criticism in its still unreleased report. The OPR could refer these lawyers for state bar discipline or even recommend criminal charges against them.

In his memos, Yoo justified giving unchecked authority to the President because the United States was in a “state of armed conflict.” Yoo wrote, “First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully.” Yoo made the preposterous argument that since deadly force could legitimately be used in self-defense in criminal cases, the President could suspend the Fourth Amendment because privacy rights are less serious than protection from the use of deadly force.

Bybee wrote in one of the memos that nothing can stop the President from sending al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners captured overseas to third countries, as long as he doesn’t intend for them to be tortured. But the Convention Against Torture, to which the United States is a party, says that no country can expel, return or extradite a person to another country “where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.” Bybee claimed the Torture Convention didn’t apply extraterritorially, a proposition roundly debunked by reputable scholars. The Bush administration reportedly engaged in this practice of extraordinary rendition 100 to 150 times as of March 2005.

The same day that Attorney General Eric Holder released the memos, the government revealed that the CIA had destroyed 92 videotapes of harsh interrogations of Abu Zubaida and Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, both of whom were subjected to waterboarding. The memo that authorized the CIA to waterboard, written the same day as one of Yoo/Bybee’s torture memos, has not yet been released.

Bush insisted that Zubaida was a dangerous terrorist, in spite of the contention of one of the FBI’s leading al Qaeda experts that Zubaida was schizophrenic, a bit player in the organization. Under torture, Zubaida admitted to everything under the sun – his information was virtually worthless.

It's always forgotten there were about six months in 2002 when nearly every panic psyop run on the US population was attributed to a warning derived from the Zubaida interrogations. (Plastic bag near the Brooklyn Bridge! We have a PLASTIC BAG NEAR THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE!)

There are more memos yet to be released. They will invariably implicate Bush officials and lawyers in the commission of torture, illegal surveillance, extraordinary rendition, and other violations of the law.

Meanwhile, John Yoo remains on the faculty of Berkeley Law School and Jay Bybee is a federal judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. These men, who advised Bush on how to create a police state, should be investigated, prosecuted, and disbarred. Yoo should be fired and Bybee impeached.

Marjorie Cohn is president of the National Lawyers Guild and author of Cowboy Republic.

I'm all for these positive developments - the release of the memos, I mean. But from Scott Horton and even Turley and here Cohn, too many of those at the front are narrowing the focus to what they think is the solid case for getting regime officials on the torture bans, essentially leaving them with the justifications intact. These still don't make their actions legal, but will fly with much of the US voting population in the future, to wit: it was a war, if we overreacted, it was in defense of the homeland!

I know the legalists don't want to touch 9/11, no matter what the evidence accumulated (Kucinich to his credit was willing to open the door!), but come on: devising vast lies to delude the US population, in the course of planning and executing aggressive war, with genocidal consequences. That complex has got to be the crown, otherwise all we get is next time the US kills a million people we'll have less of them tortured.

The problem perhaps is the two "Crescent of Crisis" wars are getting a retroactive moral wash by virtue of Obama taking them into their latest phases.

.

[JackRiddler]

http://harpers.org/archive/2009/03/hbc-90004488

March 3, 7:16 AM, 2009 · No Comment · Previous · Next

George W. Bush’s Disposable Constitution

By Scott Horton

Yesterday the Obama Administration released a series of nine previously secret legal opinions crafted by the Office of Legal Counsel to enhance the presidential powers of George W. Bush. Perhaps the most astonishing of these memos was one crafted by University of California at Berkeley law professor John Yoo. He concluded that in wartime, the President was freed from the constraints of the Bill of Rights with respect to anything he chose to label as a counterterrorism operations inside the United States.

Here’s Neil Lewis’s summary in the New York Times:

“The law has recognized that force (including deadly force) may be legitimately used in self-defense,” Mr. Yoo and Mr. Delahunty wrote to Mr. Gonzales. Therefore any objections based on the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches are swept away, they said, since any possible privacy offense resulting from such a search is a lesser matter than any injury from deadly force. The Oct. 23 memorandum also said that “First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully.” It added that “the current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically.”

John Yoo’s Constitution is unlike any other I have ever seen. It seems to consist of one clause: appointing the President as commander-in-chief. The rest of the Constitution was apparently printed in disappearing ink.

We need to know how the memo was used. Bradbury suggests it was not much relied upon; I don’t believe that for a second. Moreover Bradbury’s decision to wait to the very end before repealing it suggests that someone in the Bush hierarchy was keen on having it.

It’s pretty clear that it served several purposes. Clearly it was designed to authorize sweeping warrantless surveillance by military agencies such as the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. Using special new surveillance programs that required the collaboration of telecommunications and Internet service providers, these agencies were sweeping through the emails, IMs, faxes, and phone calls of tens of millions of Americans. Clearly such unlawful surveillance occurred. But the language of the memos suggest that much more was afoot, including the deployment of military units and military police powers on American soil. These memos suggest that John Yoo found a way to treat the Posse Comitatus Act as suspended.

These memos gave the President the ability to authorize the torture of persons held at secret overseas sites. And they dealt in great detail with the plight of Jose Padilla, an American citizen seized at O’Hare Airport. Padilla was accused of being involved in a plot to make and detonate a “dirty bomb,” but at trial it turned out that the Bush Administration had no evidence to stand behind its sensational accusations. Evidently it was just fine to hold Padilla incommunicado, deny him access to counsel and torture him–in the view of the Bush OLC lawyers, that is.

Among these memos was one for the files from Steven Bradbury, whom the Senate refused to confirm to run OLC, but who continued as a squatter in the position through the end of the Bush Administration. In his memo, the self-styled OLC head rejected a series of John Yoo-authored memos, noting the painfully obvious reasons why they were incorrect (for instance, Yoo’s penchant for misquoting the Constitution). He did this on January 15, 2009—as he was clearing his desk and preparing to hunt for a new job. So why did he leave the ridiculous Yoo memos in place until the last possible second? Michael Isikoff furnishes a very plausible analysis on MSNBC:

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We may not have realized it at the time, but in the period from late 2001-January 19, 2009, this country was a dictatorship. The constitutional rights we learned about in high school civics were suspended. That was thanks to secret memos crafted deep inside the Justice Department that effectively trashed the Constitution. What we know now is likely the least of it