Listening To You – Mukasey Plays The Emotion Card
The Bush Administration and their never say die FISA/Immunity push are like cockroaches. You can’t kill em, and they never go away. Well, they’re back again. Attorney General Michael Mukasey has graduated from DC water carrier to full fledged traveling snake oil salesman for the Cheney/Bush Administration and their sordid attempts to cover their own criminal wrongdoing via retroactive immunity for telcos.
Last night, Mukasey spoke at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco and got so emotional in his desperate plea for retroactive immunity and unlimited snooping that he he welled up with tears in the process.
… Mr. Mukasey grimaced, swallowed hard, and seemed to tear up as he reflected on the weaknesses in America’s anti-terrorism strategy prior to the 2001 attacks. "We got three thousand. … We’ve got three thousand people who went to work that day and didn’t come home to show for that," he said, struggling to maintain his composure.
Isn’t that special? Who from this Administration of criminals, fools and incompetents will cry for the Constitution that has been shredded? Who will lament the privacy of ordinary American citizens that has been lost? Who will shed a tear for the souls that have been tortured, beaten, extinguished and/or disappeared? That would be left to us I guess. There is no justice; just us.
Here, from the San Francisco Chronicle, are a few more highlights from Mukasey’s traveling minstrel show:
Attorney General Michael Mukasey defended the Bush administration’s wiretapping program Thursday to a San Francisco audience and suggested the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks could have been prevented if the government had been able to monitor an overseas phone call to the United States.
The government "shouldn’t need a warrant when somebody picks up a phone in Iraq and calls the United States," Mukasey said in a question-and-answer session after a speech to the Commonwealth Club
…
Mukasey also defended President Bush’s insistence on retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that have cooperated with the administration’s surveillance program, in which phone calls and e-mails between U.S. citizens and foreign terrorist suspects were intercepted without warrants.
…
"They have cooperated," Mukasey said of the companies, without naming them. "It just ain’t fair to ask somebody to cooperate with the government" and face a lawsuit for substantial damages, he said.
If Congress denies the companies retroactive immunity, he said, the firms will withdraw their voluntary participation and the government will have to seek court orders, losing time and potentially valuable intelligence and risking exposure of secret information.
"We face the prospect of disclosure in open court of what they (the companies) did, which is to say the means and methods with which we collect foreign intelligence against foreign targets," Mukasey said.
Madness! Madness! Madness! Crikey, it does not matter one iota how much this stuff is completely debunked, they just trot it out with impunity again and again.
The reason I am posting this, other than as general informational courtesy, is that EW is not the only one that has been on vacation; so too has been the Congress and, as to the FISA/Immunity fight, all of us. The Cheney/Bush surrogates have, undoubtedly, not been on vacation and have been plying their wishes and snake oil to the blue dogs and others to set up their next legislative push. When you see Mukasey working the room in San Francisco, the home of EFF, the AT&T Folsom Facility, Pelosi, DiFi and the conservative perceived heart of the liberal base, you know the game is on. We need to saddle up and get ready as well; because next week is time to get back to work on slaying the twin headed FISA/Immunity beast.
ERRATA: I really struggled with the video clip selection here. I must be growing up or something because I put up the one that actually showed Mukasey at the Commonwealth Club in Frisco. However, the last 3/4 of this video is what I really wanted to put up instead. Seeing, feeling, touching and listening to you; thats what the Bushies want to do.
It seems that Mukasey suddenly has this whole road show schedule going on (he’s even coming to the Suffolk County. L.I. bar association if you can believe that)which means
HE IS NOT IN DC MINDING THE FARM
So, who exactly is running the day-to-day stuff at DOJ while Mike is off doing his vaudville act on the road?
Heh. Keisler? I don’t know (you undoubtedly are closer to an answer of that than me) but, at this point, I am not sure we are worse off with Mukasey gone. They are clearly gearing up for another run at this though, what with the traveling road show right before Congress returns; makes me suspicious of what has happened behind the scenes. Remember, Reid said he would be “working” on this during the break. That makes me nervous.
The thing is Mukasey was sold to the SJC and america as the guy wh was going tocome in and put his finger in the dike so that Comey’s “resevoir of credibility” would stop draining so fast.
Yet in a metter of weeks, he seems to have been completey hypnotized and now is so far up Cheney’s butt he is now going out an weeping in freakin’ public to get that Retroactive immunity that Cheney is so hot for?
What? did they implant a chip in his brain? Have they perfected mind control techniques? How is this happening?
And why in heavens name would he agree to do it?
I don’t know, but he is coming to venues that are WAY below his pay grade
That’s what
NSAhis blackberry is for.Yeah, bmaz, Mukasey’s choke up made me want to barf, too. Tears for his own life experiences in some way, all these types ever really feel sorrow about, despite the words or context.
Thanks BMAZ for this post and filling in so ably for EW.
We can never be complacent on this issue and bluedogs and what.
Do I detect desperation in Mukasey?
1 – Is Keisler still there?
Speaking of the farm, bmaz I thought you might go with the Fleetwood Muk classic:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=AY81IpmbVR8
At least that SFC reporter included the operatives – like why it was that if there was a “known” safehouse, no one had bothered with a warrant. IIRC, I believe that’s the safehouse that the CIA knew about and had stuff wired up on, but kept secret from the FBI. And Muk skips right over the stacked up intercepts that were on hand and were ignored and not translated until after the attacks. Or the fact that several of the hijackers were already wanted and allowed to move around freely using their own names and own passports. Or that in July, Tenet’s hair was on fire or standing on end or turning grey or whatever CYAhair reference Tenet used, with direct info, and no one paid attention to it, or that a CIA agent was sent down to visit with brushcutter Bush in Crawford and explain the dire circumstances – and Bush sent him off.
What would have helped pre-9/11?
A different President.
Yeah, I just didn’t have the energy to do all the specific debunking and correcting yet again; I figured everybody here pretty much has that down. I think Keisler is still there; but Mark Filip is the DAG now.
The Goopers are still playing on the theory that if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe that it’s true. Poll the public on who thinks Saddam was making nuclear bombs, and you’ll get 20% or so who will say yes, he was. Ask them who thinks Saddam was responsible for 9/11, and another 20% (the same deluded folks?) will raise their hands. That gives them a base on which to build other lies and deceits.
So, as tiresome as it is, when these lies are spouted again and again, they need to be swatted down every. single time. In places as visible as the places where the lies are repeated.
Bob in HI
VP Cheney “so”
Did Filip get confirmed? I knew he left Chicago for DC, but has he actually been confirmed? I missed that.
Confirmed on March 4.
I guess I owe bmaz a Coke. The downside for bmaz is that if Keisler’s involved, the coke is administered while you are strapped to a board …
Remember how strongly Reid was behind the Mier’s nomination too? What the hell do they have on Reid?
And Keisler is AAG in charge of the Civil Division.
Remember when there was a whiff of scandal about some kind of land deal in Nevada. Me thinks that was a very serious warning to play ball or else goto jail and don’t pass go.
IIRC, that land deal was a bogus tale that was intended by the Rovian wing to make ‘all politicians’ look bad — so that people thought Reid was just as bad as Dukestir, Abramoff, and the rest of the amoral tools.
Typical Rove tactic.
Maybe so but there has got to be more. Stuff they have waved in the face of both Reid and Pelosi. I know that this sounds like a broken record coming from me, but the Rethugs/Rovians are all about control. The TIA/TSP without arabic translators has always been about teh Math. They do things like destroy V. Plame to control the rest of the CIA rank and file. There are many others as well. Its great to have gay senators if the vote your way, etc.
Wow, man, I’m going to have to go to my pd-on-’ludes imitation here, because this is just beyond the pale. So Mukasey chokes up at the thought of how those thousands of workers were exposed to the hideous depredations of Sept. 11, 2001 by the lack of a government electronic spying program, does he?
I’m sure many others will get on the question of whether there was such a lack, but allow me to call attention to timelines such as this one, many events of which actually are reported as part of the 9-11 Commission report. (Everyone should read that thing cover to cover, including footnotes. For all that might have been left out, it is amazing to me that what was included went no where.)
There are other ways of combing through the master timeline on 9-11 that also give one that sickening feeling, raising questions beyond just the CIA and what in the world it thought it was doing.
I’m going to go somewhere and breathe diaphragmmatically for a while …
When will the incompetents cry for the “constitution that has been shredded” Thanks Schumer and Feinstein.
Here is Siegelman’s first interview
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpoi…..ints_a.php
Oh, for crying out loud!
Mukasey is carrying water for a Preznit who:
– dismissed warnings (summer 2001) of CIA briefers with a dismissive, ‘Okay, you’ve covered your asses,‘ and then went back to clearing brush.
– failed to read the August 2001 Daily Briefing titled “Bin Laden Determined To Strike On US Soil“.
– pardoned a staffer involved in outing a CIA agent, then lied about that fact to FBI agents and a grand jury (repeatedly).
…okay, hope I’ve made my point.
So Mukasey is carrying water for the very asshats who dropped ball, after ball, after ball, after ball – thereby allowing 9/11 to occur. Of course these creeps want us all to think that their own failures before 9/11 were somehow the fault of the phone companies.
Mr. Mukasey ought to be charging Bush and Cheney for flagrant Dereliction of Duty, rather than squander his reputation covering their sleazy machinations.
It would sure be interesting to know what Fallon, Odom, and other retired military experts think of this latest BushCheney ruse.
8 – It does get tiring. But bc this guy (Soufan) never seems to get much press that he should have been due, I’ll toss in this link from an interview of Lawrence Wright (Looming Towers)
Golly – if only we just intercepted every single overseas phone call and put it in the “years from now” que for translation – that would be so much better than giving direct information specifically requested by an investigator who is actually trained and qualified.
I give Mukasey the benefit of the doubt that thinking about 9/11 does choke him up. It chokes me up. I remember for days there was something about sitting at a stoplight that would trigger me and it still happens sometimes. New Yorkers do have a special dagger in their heart and soul over that. But it is just beyond despicable to take that sorrow and anger and access it to do a salespitch for an evil man and an assortment of wicked collaborators.
Mary, you said it better than I:
I don’t think Mukasey is evil. But he appears to be naive.
Perhaps his grief over 9/11 caused some errors in his judgment, but it’s still tragic to see him enable the very people who were derelict.
I am fresh out of fucking slack for Mukasey on this. We all took a gut shot and wake up call from 9/11; he doesn’t have any corner on this market. Per my quote on the SCOTUS/Decency thread a while back, fuck that shit! 9/11 was bad, but it is insane and laughable, in a strictly tragic way, to use it as a basis for throwing away what this country is, stands for, was founded on and what so many hundreds of thousands of citizens, if not millions, have fought and died to protect and uphold. If Mukasey cannot understand this, and keep it in perspective with his grief, then he is not freaking fit to serve. End of story.
Hear! Hear! Bmaz.
Leave the crying to folks who lost family members on 9/11. (well everyone can cry) Dear friends Bev and John Titus lost their darling daughter Alyssa that day she was an airline stewardess. Bev and John led the Feb 2003 March against the invasion in New York City with other 9/11 families against the invasion.
http://www.sweetalicia.org/
Mukasey has a fucking job to do. Do it!
Point well taken.
I do, however, think that Mukasey (like millions of others) has been traumatized. In his case, it’s obviously very immediate – working near the WTC, and I’m sure he had friends who perished. People do strange things when they are traumatized. But your point remains valid; people didn’t fight wars and those lying in military graves deserve to have the Constitution better served. On that point, I suspect that we heartily agree.
“I am fresh out of fucking slack for Mukasey on this. We all took a gut shot and wake up call from 9/11; he doesn’t have any corner on this market. Per my quote on the SCOTUS/Decency thread a while back, fuck that shit! 9/11 was bad, but it is insane and laughable, in a strictly tragic way, to use it as a basis for throwing away what this country is, stands for, was founded on and what so many hundreds of thousands of citizens, if not millions, have fought and died to protect and uphold. If Mukasey cannot understand this, and keep it in perspective with his grief, then he is not freaking fit to serve. End of story.”
Actually, I rather think that Mukasey possibly does carry around with his a special sense of responsibility. Remember, he tried four major al-Qaeda cases between about 1995 and 2001 in the Southern District of NY, those transcripts being some of the best “intelligence” on what al-Qaeda was all about as anything the CIA had in hand. Steve Simon and Daniel Benjamin used them extensively in their book, “The Age of Sacred Terror” and in the notes have cited the URL’s to the on-line transcripts. Simon and Benjamin note that DOJ and CIA never cross referenced the trial evidence with their FBI and CIA files, but they claim in many way it was a more complete picture than what they had available at the NSC during Clinton’s second term. Mukasey had to make many rulings on evidence that could be used at trial, and he apparently took great pains not to admit testimony and exhibits that went to a conspiracy beyond the actual charges, meaning that he forclosed a narrative that encompased all these cases. He did the First WTC Bombing Case, the Blind Sheik case, the Embassy Bombing Cases — some of these were multiple trials, for instance Ramzi Yousef’s trial, was seperate from the first WTC bombing trial. Given that all of these cases included evidence presented as substitutions, Mukasey would have had to rule on many matters where he accessed raw intelligence. In many respects he probably knew more about the whole al-Qaeda topic than almost anyone else in the US prior to 9/11, and that is a fairly heavy burden. His courtroom was a few blocks from the towers, one might even say what he could have added up from his own knowledge as the towers came down just might be the kind of bias that would make some of his deep seeded even unconscious emotions inappropriate for an AG. But I rather doubt if his emotional responses are inauthentic, and suspect his “wiretapping” beliefs — maybe even his torture ones, are profoundly influenced by his special knowledge, and color how he would approach simply, the law.
He is entitled to his emotions; but NOT to have them color how he approaches the law or his job.
Ya’ know, that’s a really good point. We’ve heard there’s a big shortage of translation resources, so we must assume that most of the actionable intercepts are in English. Which rules out them nasty foreign terrorist types, who we can assume are not speaking English.
So…who are they targeting for careful analysis?
Hmm. (Tap tap, is thing on? Can you hear me now?)
The courthouse he sat in is walking distance from the WTC. The judges chambers are ina tower and there are not that many tall buildings between the courthouse tower and the WTC. Many judges would have had an birdeye veiw of he whole thing as it happened.
They crowds of fleeing peole came right past the courthouse.
But isn’t funny the difference in reactions to the same exposure?
Why all the tears for the loss instead of outrage not at failing to tap phones of TERRORISTS, but tapping phones at large?
Why the weepery for the lack of a phone tap, instead of unending fury at the myriad failures that lead up to and caused 9/11 — none of which had anything to do with the lack of phone taps?
Is it this very feature of Mukasey’s current psychological profile that made him so desirable for the role he now fills, someone so consumed with those one or two things, deeply mired in cognitive dissonance to the point where he cannot see beyond them?
The freinds of mine who wre at WTC on the day and who worked onthe pile aftewars, cannot speak of it for ANY purpose w.o choking up.
I/m just pissed that Mukasey is accessing and exploiting hids genuine pain for such a nullshit reason
The Attorney General, the top lawyer in the United States, acting for the US Government, is meant to lead by example. To demonstrate his or her superlative legal skills, and political and managerial acumen. Mr. Mukasey gives us grade school play tears. Yup, he’s member of Team Cheney.
But it is just beyond despicable to take that sorrow and anger and access it to do a salespitch for an evil man and an assortment of wicked collaborators.
The part that sets me off so badly that I seriously have to take a few steps back to contain it.
” ‘We got three thousand. … We’ve got three thousand people who went to work that day and didn’t come home to show for that,’ he said, struggling to maintain his composure.”
You would almost think that 9/11 happened for the sole reason that this administration needed the cover to do its deeds… If I had someone who died on 9/11, I would be livid!
Happy Friday everyone.
Bmaz, great job this week – it’s like the boss never left!
Mukasey’s been taking acting lessons from John Boehner; he cries as credibly as Bush feels sorry for Katrina victims, flying overhead while not having a vodka and vodka. He shouldn’t give up his equity card; he’d never earn another one. As for his legal authority, he obviously gave that up when he joined Team Cheney.
29 – that’s why I think he really can summon up for real tears by conjuring that up. To summon them up just to act out such a low rent role, tho, I don’t get how you become that person. The one who takes something that really is raw in your heart and use it to the worst effect. It just evades me – I can’t follow it.
So I give my thumbs up to bmaz’s: “it is insane and laughable, in a strictly tragic way, to use it as a basis for throwing away what this country is, stands for, was founded on and what so many hundreds of thousands of citizens, if not millions, have fought and died to protect and uphold”
I guess if someone wants to figure out the whatifs of intercepts, this would be one place to start:
DOJ wins legal battle with DNC over WH Emails
If everyone had known that God sent a pestilence of toads upon DC and they ended up running the Military and the Dept. of Justice, maybe there’d be a few hundred thousand less horror stories that bring tears to peoples’ eyes. If they can still cry. If they still have eyes. If they are still alive.
The court’s conclusion that White House e-mails, disclosed to the non-governmental and highly partisan RNC seems, well, partisan. But then, that’s the DC district, from which appeals go to the ever so liberal and neutral DC Circuit, eh.
I haven’t seen the decision. It would be more persuasive if we had access to the airtight services contract the White House has in place with the RNC – if any – that might support the RNC’s characterization as a neutral “data services provider” rather than a player in the White House game.
The Dems better start thinking just how extensive a reform project they will need to launch to institute any reform.
Maybe Mukasey’s recycling narratives from the defunct Giuliani campaign; gotta recoup those sunk costs somehow.
Yes, good question about whose running the DOJ ship while Mukasey is doing summer stock. Answer: the same people running the DOJ when Mukasey is in DC. The question the DOJ staff should be asking is where’s Addington.
lhp – if you are around, could you give any insight into why no preservation notices went out to CIA and others in connection with all the many pieces of litigation going on everywhere involving torture, coerced statements, etc.? Does DOJ just not give preservation notices?
Also, I’m sure this is already “old” news here, but the NYT reports that the destruction of all kinds of tapes and recordings, not just the waterboarding tapes, may end up be a “problem.”
I believe Hayden also stands behind his statements that there is no warrant clause in the fourth amendment, just a requirement to do what you personally think is reasonable – especially what you think is reasonable if you can keep it secret and never have to explain WHY it should be called reasonable; and oh yeah, the statements that “teh program” is targetted only and doesn’t involve any dragnetting or data mining; and oh oh yeah – those statements to the joint 9/11 investigation that the NSA was operating under the same rules as it did pre-9/11.
I can see why a guy like that wants something to stand behind.
So far, the count is “17 court orders in 21 lawsuits that required preservation of evidence” and yet – poof.
And as if Karma wasn’t through with us yet – the youtubes of Bush dancing jigs will probably live on forever.
Mary, I don’t know one way or another if a preservaton order went out. I suspect it did not b.c unlike the preservation order that wrnt tothe WH in cinnection wit ht eplame investigation b/c the DOJ would reasonably EXECT there to be something to preserve,
If I undersatand what I have read in the press ocrrectly, DOJ did not necesssarily know what to ask for in a preservation order to CIA< DOD etc.</p>
As to the destruction of hte tapes, I hvae already written a post baout it. I am not sure wen it will run
36 – I’m probably wrong, but IIRC there was a right for RNC to access the emails pretty much anytime. But you are right – there’s no need to go hustling around trying to figure that one out, bc once someone of the intellect and integrity of Kavanaugh gets their grip on that case, well, that will pretty much settle things.
I haven’t seen the case either and the blurbs are often wrong. We’ll see. I’m not sure what the judge thought she would have done if she had been asked to rule on whether or not the PRA was violated as well. She seems to want to pretend she would have done something, but I have to wonder what.
You know, I need to read the memorandum opinion to get a true bead on this thing, but my inclination upon reading a news article on it was that the decision may not be as bad as people think when they read “DNC Loses”. My main reason for saying that is that is appeared that the court made a finding of fact and corresponding conclusion of law that there had been substantial cross pollinization between the WH and RNC on what should have been separate concepts and, therefore, the two could not be separated. If this is true, it may work to the disadvantage of the DNC on this case, but that ought to be VERY helpful in a lot of much more important legal questions down the road.
And to mary, I agree, the news blurb seems to have sensationalized the decision. It was more limited and dealt only with whether the records were subject to disclosure under FOIA. It doesn’t appear to have dealt with the reach of executive privilege or whether and to what extent the PRA was violated.
I also agree with mary’s trenchant observation that Brett Kavanaugh will grow a beard before he votes against Cheney/Bush. Sadly, unless he gets bored, our good senators have saddled us with a thirty-something lightweight neocon gofer for the next forty years. Judge Silberman’s legacy is in good hands.
But January 20, 2009 is coming — and they know it as well as we do.
I’m just hoping that some career DOJ types are quietly making backups and copies of the documents that pass through their hands and computers, so that when the inevitable January 19, 2009 computer cleanup accidentally eliminates the records of different DOJ offices for the last eight years, enough copies will still exist elsewhere to help reconstruct the trail of abuse.
There’s a monster timeline waiting to be constructed next Jan 20 — but only if the data still exists.
I’m sure that Marcy, the head of the National Archives, and the incoming Attorney General would be deeply, deeply grateful to any DOJ lurkers here who can take actions to see that the relevant data to which they are privy is not “disappeared”.
39 – It might. I have no idea was was really postulated and ruled upon, but it tends to sound a bit like: Well, there was exec privilege stuff (which is exempted from FOIA) AND political stuff that isn’t privileged, but also isn’t available for a FOIA request, and both were handled on the RNC account. The use of the RNC account, which could be accessed by third parties with no privilege, doesn’t destroy privilege and it also kinda imparts privilege protection to the political claptrap that got commingled with it, although then well, gosh, there may have been violations of Hatch and PRA. But there’s no one to complain about those violations in a prosecutorial sense and no punishments for PRA violations, so Oh Well. But it could really be much different than that and it could also be that the pretty clear statement of a flagrant disregard of PRA may be worth something at some point too. ??
OT – and also probably old news here, but there’s a diary up at kos about a blog that’s maintained by Ed Brill, who is an IBM Lotus exec. He put up a post apparently on the 23rd explaining why the testimony from Payton and Issa’s embrace of it were objectionable (apparently IBM didn’t think it was a good idea to leave unchallenged the assertions that its somehow a typical dipical thing to lose thousands, or even millions, of emails when you switch from Lotus Notes to Outlook (and he didn’t care for Issa’s characterization of Lotus Notes as Wagon Wheel technology).
The kos diary is here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/…..177/485943
and like I said, I’m sure there’s probably nothing there that hasn’t already been here over and over, but I got a kick out of and IBM exec blogging to pretty much say Payton and Issa were a Punch and Judy show.
In response to the IBM/Lotus Notes/lost email thingie; I’ve said it before–no one dumps email or any other files that are in any way important from a legal or procedural standpoint at any time, and never just because you cut over to a different system. Any operational software change I’ve been a part of started with the absolute given that all old files and data were to be saved and moved over for future access.
Email used to be deleted after some time, but that’s all changed over the last decade. Storage is cheap and we’ve all learned that you better have the documents handy when some legal challenge hits the fan.
Throw in the statutory requirement to preserve all White House records, and anyone who says that email files have been deleted is lying. Pure and simple.
Mmmm, a loose string to play with in the fresh Felipe Sixto story, courtesy WarandPiece. See the update.
Very interesting. Looks like a rather familiar model, doesn’t it?
Like the NRCC and Chris Ward’s outfit and their co-location?
Like the NRCC and Chris Ward’s outfit and their co-location?
You know, I hadn’t noticed that small but important and pretense shattering detail, though Ward is just who Sixto was reminding me of.
Gee, looks like an m.o.
How conveeeeenient, yes?
Pretty obvious to me that there are certain “economies” that can be realized with co-location. Ahem.
Less like an m.o. than an SOP for a RICO outfit.
Hey, you know me! (Just back from out for a while.)
Heh heh heh. Remember the recent picture of Bush and the giant Easter Bunny? It is Fred Fielding in the freaking bunny suit!!!
I guess Mukasey’s next tear filled moment will come when he declares to keep America safe we will need to make Bush’s tax cuts permanent.
There is a lot of pressure in the brief tenure of Mukasey at AG, if his term ends in early 2009. The administration has 6 showTrials it plans to conduct on its captures from the wars. Little is going to restrain a congress that gives prisonerAbuse rights to some agencies, not to others. The FBI’s current director formerly was the FBIregional leader in the city where Mukasey addressed the Commonwealth club. I have missed finding a link to a photo from the airport, but my recollection is the image was George Schultz traveling with Mukasey. There was a memorable talk by Schultz in a similarly controversial setting at the Commonwealth venue around the time Reagan’s term was ending. Like the dignitaries invitations at BCLaw set for May2008, the CommonwealthC in the interest of balanced agenda often invites importunements from ultraconservatives. My take on Mukasey’s status now is when confronted by an audience guaranteed to contain a quantifiable admix of bleedingHartLiberals, the recognition that those were sentient people elicited a human response from the ex-retired elderly gent. As a child I visited the WTC area, but looking for surplus electronics gear which was available in a deteriorated block of tiny stores; but the entire existence of WTC as part of the skyline occurred in a span of years when I was in silicon valley and did not see WTC at all. Though, at the time of its evaporation my perspective was it housed a lot of young optimistic people interested in some of the modern ideals which infused silicon valley, though focusing on commerce mostly abroad; there were other tenants in the buildings as well. The substance of the formal prepared remarks Mukasey presented addressed the embarrassment his department is experiencing in recent days over his order to disband the public corruption unit in central CA that would have prosecuted a CA congressperson; the remarks cite the DoJ’s recent statistics for politicians prosecuted, and names names among Republicans a talk laboriously crafted to demonstrate apoliticality of his department. It seems like a long text for a format that usually is barely a halfhour, followed by formally submitted questions which are then condensed, combined, and usually addressed to the speaker by the emcee rather than by actual audience members. I have yet to locate a transcript, though one might be interesting.
lhp – @ 50. I can believe and understand that – and that they may still feel that way decades from now. I’m guessing you are pretty close to the same camp. It’s not really the kind of shock and sorrow that could fade away to nothing.
49 On the tapes, it was my understanding that all recordings of all interrogations or of the detentions were pretty much at issue from the beginning in those suits. I don’t know what more info would have been needed to give CIA an order to preserve all recordings of all interrogations and detention. IIRC, Padilla’s lawyers raised, from the time of the arrest warrant, the issues of Zubaydah’s detention and questioning as the source for the warrant and Coleman and Cloonan were telling the FBI that there was torture and coercion and a crazy “witness” at issue from very early on. I just thought maybe there is some reason why DOJ attys would respond differently than lawyers in a normal civil matter with respect to preservation notices.
52 – I think we all knew on a lot of fronts he’d have to be on team Cheney or else he wouldn’t have gotten the nomination. I just think there was some hope he’d be a bit like what Gates seems to have been – someone who at least makes some efforts to be truthful and to better some things. It’s been sad to see even those lowered expectations to be set too high.
Horton asks a question (about the US DOJ interpretations of the Conventions Against Torture) that I know a few here have wondered about on lots of other fronts:
His answer takes him to another question:
The answer to that goes to some very sad places. Mukasey won’t be able to summon up a tear for any of that, because there’s no personal benefit for him there. And tears are a pretty valuable thing – you can’t waste them without purpose.
marksb@55 – I’m as nontech as you get and not having things saved before you switchover makes no sense to me. In addition to explaining that a lotus notes to outlook move doesn’t disappear things, Brill makes your point here too, in a bit more backhanded way. He:
The rationale of protecting means and methods can’t be stretched enough to credibly cover such broad surveillance and information programs. There has been and is plenty of leeway to obtain warrants for targeted surveillance and other warrant-dependent actions when there is something more than a wild guess to support a warrant. I’m sorry there was a misperception of the wall between the FBI and the CIA, complicated by hubris, but that misperception was not the Constitution’s fault, and a strong President could have gotten the agencies cooperating far more to combat terror operations.
Narrowly focused intelligence and law enforcement operations do rely on secrecy of particular means and methods, but the Bush administration’s efforts to check out everything went outside that scope. And do the administration team think that the bad guys don’t know about wireless intercepts; about splitters and about automated deep packet inspection and semantic analysis; about National Security Letters? No, but hoodwinking the public about who knows what is an indispensable part of the Bush administration game plan, and most Members of Congress have gone along with or actively boosted that game plan.
bmaz,
Thanks you so much for all your work while EW was away. Your work and effort superb!
EW, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!! And thank you for the past year’s writing and investigating!
Props to both of you!
Via Glenn Greenwald Saturday morning, in this excerpt in the SF Chronicle of Mukasey’s Thursday speech in SFO, Mukasey puts his own and the president’s problem in an ironic nutshell (emph. added):
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/…..9VROE9.DTL
In defending the need for executive privilege, Mukasey artlessly conflates it with the administration’s greatest aspiration and its greatest problem – that lack of accountability. Without it, there’s no check on excess, no correction for incompetence, no straightening the inevitable veering off course.
Scott Horton points out today another hypocrisy in Mukasey’s speech: his claims that the DOJ’s public integrity section is apolitical and that he’s seen “no evidence” of political prosecution in his department. As the Chronicle article cited above pointed out, Mukasey would be more convincing had he said that without so tightly closing his eyes and his mind.
And thanks, bmaz, for a job well done. She Who Must Be Obeyed is without parallel, but I think we’d all benefit from a regular, periodic law blog at her place. ‘Cause so many of the problems created by this administration rely on or stem from its corruption of the law.
—-
Attorney General Michael Mukasey defended the Bush administration’s wiretapping program Thursday to a San Francisco audience and suggested the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks could have been prevented if the government had been able to monitor an overseas phone call to the United States.
The government ”shouldn’t need a warrant when somebody picks up a phone in Iraq and calls the United States,” Mukasey said in a question-and-answer session after a speech to the Commonwealth Club
—-
Alright, I’m a little confused. I thought the Bush administration started their domestic spying program long before 9/11:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/wo…..hp?id=5514
What am I missing here about Mukasey’s claim that 9/11 could have been stopped if the U.S. government would have been allowed to monitor overseas calls?
– Tom