Bill Leonard on AIPAC Trial
Bill Leonard, the former head of ISOO whose job David Addington tried to Pixie Dust out of existence because Leonard had the audacity to assume Dick Cheney was required to follow the same classification and declassification rules as everyone else in the executive branch, never got a chance to testify in the AIPAC trial. That’s because, as soon as the Court ruled that Leonard could testify (and that judges get some say over what is introduced at trial), the government quickly dismissed the case.
But Leonard has described his take on the AIPAC case in his new blog:
The Government’s premise in this case was that non-Government officials who do not possess security clearances, such as lobbyists, reporters, and think-tank specialists, can be criminally culpable for further disseminating information shared with them by Government officials, even if they solely received the information by word-of-mouth and were not necessarily informed in the first place that it was supposedly classified . Never before had the Justice Department brought such a criminal case and to me, the actions of Keith Weissman and Steven Rosen clearly should never have served as the basis for the Government’s attempt to initially establish such a far-reaching precedent.
Supporters of the Government’s case have stated that organizations such as AIPAC should not be able to determine what is classified and what is not. I agree – that is the role of the government. However, I became involved in this case because it was clear to me that the government had failed to adequately determine exactly what was and was not properly classified information. All too often, in dealing with the public or the two co-equals branches of government, Executive branch officials simply assert classification. Equally disturbing, the judiciary and the Congress often reflexively defer to such claims. Fortunately, in the AIPAC case, Judge T. S. Ellis 3rd refused to allow the Government to make such an assertion. After reviewing the evidence in detail, I became convinced that the Government would not be able to demonstrate that the specific information the defendants were accused of disclosing was indeed classified in accordance with the process set forth by the President or that, in other instances, it would be easy for the defense to demonstrate that the information was already widely known and thus part of the vast morass of official information subject to the frequent abuse of over-classification. To be effective, the national security tool of classification must be used with precision and in accordance with the standards and limitations set forth by the President.
I guess it’s clear why Leonard would have been such a damning witness for the government’s case.
By the way, gang, Marcy’s twittering the Personal Democracy Forum ‘09. You can learn more about the conference at this link and watch hash tag #pdf09 at Twitter for more.
A shout out to Jay Ackroyd who’s also in attendance!
Not the first case to get dropped because of a witness being barred/allowed.
But for most lawyers I’ve talked to, when you drop a case because a witness is ALLOWED it indicates not only a weak case to start with but an attempt to play by the letter of the law rather than the spirit.
I dunno if judges find it amusing or annoying when allowing a witness results in a dropped case. They’re generally annoyed when someone wastes their time.
Boxturtle (Otoh, watching a bogus case implode has got to have some amusement value)
If Weissman and Rosen could have been convicted, where would that leave (to name just 2) Bob Novak and Judy Miller?
Might be a good lesson for Holder — defending indefensible Bush administration postions will only make him look like a fool.
I don’t like Holder, but he’s no fool. He knew with reasonable certainty that witness was going to be allowed. Rather than prosecute it, he dropped it. Probably the wisest thing he could do.
The question is: Why stall? Knowing that witness was going to be allowed, he could have bailed much sooner. What benefit did the time buy for ObamaCo? I dunno…
Boxturtle (When a smart person does something apparently dumb, suspect it)
If this “lobby” were not also a branch of the Israeli government, the comparison to every other legitimate “lobby” might be valid. When a “lobby” is the face of a foreign country that so infiltrates the our own government, those tasked with insisting that this “lobby” register as an agent of a foreign government stand silently by – you get arguments like these that are completely disconnected from reality – placing the focus not on the status of the agents as alleged “lobbyists,” but on the status of the documents, and whether or not the information on Iran should have been shared with foreign agents.
Zogby Poll:
Leave it to AIPAC and the controlled media to shift the subject where it can best be “explained.”
Totally OT – John Rizzo: The most influential career lawyer in CIA history:
No comprendo.
I think we all understand, we just don’t like how blatant it’s become.
We’re the Jenny Sanfords having to watch our guy’s once secret torture lust coming out in the open. You know, Obama tweeting to Preston over the erotic allure of the curve of a detainees back while tied in a stress position and how kewl it is, after knowing about torture and presidential torturers for eight years, but only from afar, to now have this intimate relationship with their magnificent appendages …
Obama is hiking the Apalachian Trail with torture and we all get to figure out what to tell the kids.
OT – but re: the Attash post, Glen updated his piece to link to this bit from Booman pointing out even more existing, non-torture, evidence. The story that they can’t convict without using torture testimony just doesn’t hold up.
Where did this come from? Is this for real?
Bob from HI
currently in AZ
No. She’s being snarky.
But this is how rumors also get started.
Sorry, I need to get better with the /s.
My “Ich Bein Jenny Sanford” analogy on Obama and torture came from what I was remembering (and misremembering) about this Sanford email that was released:
@11 – not all false rumors are bad things though, right? I mean look at all the good that came from the Gulf of Tonkin incident? Besides, everything on this thread is a state secret anyway – DOJ will go to bat for us on that. After all, imagine if late night comics …
More ot and this is not snarky – I found this over the weekend and thought it was a very good read.
Martha Rosler and “A Case for Torture Redux” She had done a film response to a Newsweek op piece in the early 80s that made the case then for torture (ticking time bombs, saving children, etc.) and it’s an interesting revisit of then and now. She makes some points about the number of terrorism casualties (not just a number to anyone, though) and the corresponding number of the disappeared in Latin America – disappeared by our “friendly” dicators using our training and our CIA assistance.
She doesn’t mention it in her analogy about the latin americanization of the USA now, but I think the start to the Bush admin, with the CIA assisted killings of a missionary’s wife and infant son and attempted killing of the rest in the plane – was the platform from which a lot was sprung. After the public accepted that, what wouldn’t an Executive be willing to pull off?
I didn’t say it was false. See Keith Olbermann’s post last week at DailyKos about the right-wing’s misappropriation of content to use against the left, simply because somebody on the left wrote about KO what we understood to be hyperbole.
It’s kind of like Declan McCullagh’s personal interpretation of Al Gore’s comment about the internet — McCullagh’s hyperbole became a wedge used against Gore. That same “lie” has now been repeated not once but twice today at the Personal Democracy Forum, including by a progressive who should know better. It’s more than ten years later and we still can’t shake that crap loose out of the system, even though it was merely rhetoric.
We need to be as fact-based as possible while point-blank blunt, if we’re going to hold this administration accountable and not set up conditions where an easily manipulated moderate conservative can become the heir apparent for the next term. What would Mitt Romney do, better or worse than Obama on this same issue of torture? And how would his campaign use our own hyperbole against us instead of facts? The language matters.
If you won’t say it, I guess I’ll have to – Obama did not tweet Preston about the magnificent appendages of his torturers.
I’m pretty sure not.
Fairly sure.
I’m wondering about Leonard’s take on the argument that information should be kept secret bc Jon Stewart might make fun of it?
Jeff Stein has a bit up about Iran that references Patrick Tyler’s, A World of Trouble: The White House and the Middle East–from the Cold War to the War on Terror Stein refers to a story by Tyler about
Not to start any rumors …
Mary, I guess I should understand, but this still just stuns me:
After all we’ve learned, an amoral twerp like that can still be confirmed. Sometimes I just feel defeated.
Not so much defeated, and hence my Sanford analogy. Betrayed is the word.
Great how the MSM covered the story of putting a pro-torture lawyer in at CIA to take the place of the prior pro-torture lawyer. That’s what Obama’s leadership gets us – more and more hikes down the Appalachian trail.
Golly, if the data itself weren’t classified, then there would be no crime here to prosecute.
I would never underestimate the mendacity of the Bush DoJ, but I guess I’ve lost track of the problem here. The Bush DoJ invented crimes in the Siegelman and related cases in order to derail the careers of political opponents. It recklessly mishandled the Stevens and similar cases in order to make their convictions, if any, reversible on appeal. What were the Bushies after by inventing such a claim relating to leaks to AIPAC, which they adore? To distract from more egregious misconduct or to cover for someone else’s related actions?
Larry Franklin admitted that AIPAC and the Israeli gave him more information than he gave them. “I knew in my heart that his government had this information,” Franklin said. “He gave me far more information than I gave him.” The real story here is the flow of information into the Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon relating to the false intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq.
I thought I already linked to this, but I can’t find it now. There’s so much going on, perhaps it’s all starting to run together in my brain. Sorry if a repeat.
Exclusive: Top CIA lawyers to face legal complaints over roles in interrogation program
BY LARISA ALEXANDROVNA Published: June 29, 2009 Updated 2 hours ago
“A grassroots coalition will file complaints today with the Washington, D.C. bar against two Central Intelligence Agency lawyers for their involvement in authorizing the use of controversial interrogation techniques against detainees in US custody.
“Velvet Revolution, a coalition of over 150 grassroots groups, will register complaints against CIA lawyers Jonathan M. Fredman and John A. Rizzo. Fredmen, who is currently counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, served as the Associate General counsel for the CIA from 2001-2004. Rizzo is the current Acting General Counsel for the CIA but is retiring this month. His nomination to become full General Counsel has been held up for years over his alleged role in enabling the CIA’s controversial interrogation program.”
http://rawstory.com/08/news/20…..omplaints/
These guys have a worthy goal, but their efforts are strictly all hat and no cattle. They are going nowhere at light speed; tilting at windmills would be a better use of their time.
*Sigh*
There is a use to this, really. It opens the Overton Window.
The push for prosecution and for disbarment from outside of the body of political structures has to be done as aggressively as possible by somebody, to make more deliberate efforts at finding and disclosing the truth appear to be more reasoned and rational.
The right-wing does this all the time; the left has not really figured out how to do this in an organized fashion. I’ll point to the incendiary tactics of the Young Americans for Freedom and their overtly racist tactics, which make the rest of the right-wing appear more moderate. YAF also functions today the way that the Young Republicans did in the ’70’s-’90’s, nurturing monsters like Grover Norquist and Karl Rove and a host of other toxic beasts.
The effort to take on CIA lawyers forces them to stay on their toes and generates attention for and opens dialog on the larger issue of the impact of CIA tactics on our foreign policy strategy.
Thanks for saying all that. I was just a-fixin’ to ask skdadl if we couldn’t find a bar somewhere in cyberspace and drop a tear or two in a beer.
On my way, fatster. How far are you from Ontario again?
Half-way would be some place in Nebraska. So, I did google around and found us a nice place in cyberspace. See ya there!
http://www.virtualbeer.com/home/tasting_room.html
I’ve never been to Nebraska, although I know that Dick Cavett comes from there.
And I know that this guy comes from Ontario:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…..re=related
Nice performance.
He does come from Ontario in a way, but don’t let anyone from Winnipeg (Manitoba) hear you say that.
Hope you didn’t miss Joni in the video. She’s from Alberta. And mum’s the word on Winnipeg, I promise.
I thought that was her silhouette!
But fatster, Joni comes from Saskatchewan. It’s me who’s from Alberta.
Eeeeeek! Well, life’s a learning experience, so thanks for helping me along. Let me try one more, for your possible correction, k. d. lang is also from Alberta. I’m from Jawja.
C’rect! k.d. is one of ours. They all love her now, o’ course, but my guess is that growing up in small-town Alberta was sometimes a trying experience for k.d.
talkingpointsmemo.com says Madoff just got 150 years.
This has to do with terrism, so I guess it’s not too much of a stretch to link to it frm here.
Calif. examines insurers’ investments in Iran
By DON THOMPSON Associated Press Writer
Jun 29th, 2009 | SACRAMENTO, Calif. — “California Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner has ordered all insurance companies doing business in the state to report investments that might benefit Iran.
“Poizner said Monday that he wants to ensure that money paid by policyholders is not flowing to a U.S.-listed state sponsor of terrorism.
Poizner has given companies 90 days to produce the information.
“It will include investments in Iran’s petroleum, natural gas, banking, nuclear or defense industries. Insurance industry representatives say Poizner is interfering with U.S. foreign policy.”
Hahahahahaha.
http://www.salon.com/wires/ap/…..index.html
How many investigations into the Israeli lobbies activities have been shut down over the decades?