IOB and Gonzales’s Latest Perjury

I’ve got just a few minutes before I’ve got to pack up for DC. But I wanted to point out a curious detail about the WaPo’s story on NSLs: the centrality of PFIAB in it. The story, of course, reveals that Gonzales received reports of violations of National Security Letter procedures, and then went into Congress and said there had been no problems with the program. But in addition to Gonzales, the board that’s supposed to police our intelligence activities also received reports of the violations.

Each of the violations cited in the reports copied to Gonzales wasserious enough to require notification of the President’s IntelligenceOversight Board, which helps police the government’s surveillanceactivities. The format of each memo was similar, and none minced words.

"Thisenclosure sets forth details of investigative activity which the FBIhas determined was conducted contrary to the attorney general’sguidelines for FBI National Security Investigations and ForeignIntelligence Collection and/or laws, executive orders and presidentialdirectives," said the April 21, 2005, letter to the IntelligenceOversight Board.

The oversight board, staffed with intelligenceexperts from inside and outside government, was established to reportto the attorney general and president about civil liberties abuses orintelligence lapses. But Roehrkasse said the fact that a violation isreported to the board "does not mean that a USA Patriot violationexists or that an individual’s civil liberties have been abused." [my emphasis]

Two things about this. First, I suspect we’re going to hear some folks in the upcoming days disputing Roehrkasse’s claim that a report to the Board doesn’t mean that a violation of civil liberties has occurred (in fact, I rather think Roehrkasse is parsing carefully in that statement there). Time was, when something got elevated to the Board, it was serious. So if AGAG is ignoring such reports, it means he’s ignoring real evidence of wrongdoing.

Second, the Intelligence Oversight Board is different from the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. But Presidents tie them closer together as they choose to–and I’ve heard that Bush may have tied them quiet closely indeed. Which reminds me of this post that I did a few weeks ago that pointed out that the only entity that, like Cheney’s Fourth Branch, was not complying with classification and declassification guidelines was PFIAB. I wonder whether IOB has done it’s part to bury evidence that citizens should know?