Obama and Gang of Eight Veto Threat: “Fundamental Compact” My Ass
Obama says he’ll veto the Intelligence Authorization Bill if it includes measures to expand notification on covert ops outside of the Gang of Eight. Laughably, he says the Gang of Eight notification requirement has been a "fundamental compact between Congress and the President."
Report on Covert Actions (Section 321). The Administration strongly objects to section 321, which would replace the current “Gang of 8” notification procedures on covert activities. There is a long tradition spanning decades of comity between the branches regarding intelligence matters, and the Administration has emphasized the importance of providing timely and complete congressional notification, and using “Gang of 8” limitations only to meet extraordinary circumstances affecting the vital interests of the United States. Unfortunately, section 321 undermines this fundamental compact between the Congress and the President as embodied in Title V of the National Security Act regarding the reporting of sensitive intelligence matters – an arrangement that for decades has balanced congressional oversight responsibilities with the President’s responsibility to protect sensitive national security information. Section 321 would run afoul of tradition by restricting an important established means by which the President protects the most sensitive intelligence activities that are carried out in the Nation’s vital national security interests. In addition, the section raises serious constitutional concerns by amending sections 501-503 of the National Security Act of 1947 in ways that would raise significant executive privilege concerns by purporting to require the disclosure of internal Executive branch legal advice and deliberations. Administrations of both political parties have long recognized the importance of protecting the confidentiality of the Executive Branch’s legal advice and deliberations. If the final bill presented to the President contains this provision, the President’s senior advisors would recommend a veto. [my bold]
With all due respect, Mr. President. But are you fucking nuts?!?!?!
The Gang of Eight briefing system has been a central instrument of abuse of power, by which the President does things that violate fundamental tenets of the Constitution, but gets legal "sanction" for those things by telling eight four people who are all but hamstrung to do anything about those things. And when people "lie affirmatively" to you, you can’t really say that’s part of "comity" or a "fundamental compact." The Gang of Eight briefing system has been neither an element of "comity" nor a "fundamental compact" but rather a keystone of a dysfunctional, abusive relationship that guts our Constitution.
And Obama wants to keep it that way.
“With all due respect, . . .”
Amen!!!!
No President ever willingly gives back power aggregated by his predecessor. Ever.
But Congress can take it back, and they must.
“and they must”
Yep. Article II doesn’t get smaller by itself.
14 dimensional chess
maybe even chess pi.
Still grumpy with Article II then I take it? ; )
I didn’t like King W and I don’t like King O any better. Still the odds that our Congress will force our King to sign anything like a modern Magna Carta seems exceedingly remote.
Alas we get the representation that our corporations pay for…
Since this came from the OMB, I’m wondering if Peter Orszag is off the reservation on his own with this.
Probably not, but hope springs eternal.
There are too many instances in the Obama administration where they have one-upped Bush assertions of unfettered power to suggest these are rogue statements. Either Obama has entirely lost control of the reservation or he agrees with his courtiers. Neither is good.
Comity? More like comedy! Congress didn’t even enforce Gang of Eight rules: “Let’s only inform the R’s; they’ll like what we’re doing!”
I’m guessing that the Obama Administration has sufficient Senate obstructionists (Jello Jay will cheerfully lead the pack) to back up their veto threat, so in a guess, the House bill as constructed will not make it through the Senate.
oh, this is one reason i love internet reporting and commentary, especially emptywheel.
remember what nytwitimes white-house reporter elizabeth bumiller said with reference to george w. bush?
“you can’t just call the president of the united states a liar.”
nor, presumably, “fucking nuts”.
but at firedoglake reporters can and do.
and properly so.
and guess what – these same reporters give their readers first-rate reporting on political news that is actually central to what is happening in our government.
and superbly meaningful commentary, not the pablum and pap mainstream reporters dish out to hoi polloi.
actually, “fucking nuts” is a relatively polite way to describe obama’s sophistry.
personally, i’s say it is just more public lying, public lying from our new president.
so what else is new.
This is where I hope the Dems in Congress are more willing to stand up to a Dem president than a Rep president (it’s been true my entire life). And the Reps in Congress are just hypocritical enough to join in to override a veto.
If Obama doesn’t realize that he has to pay for Bush’s sins, he’s sadly mistaken. The argument they make just won’t fly after the Bush/Cheney regime.
I hope you’re right. Obama’s administration continues to frustrate.
One of Cheney’s oft quoted phrases centers around moving the power of the Executive at least back to what Nixon enjoyed at the start of his administration. Isn’t it odd that after all the Executive abuse and crimes under Bush/Cheney, that our Congress may now grow some cojones and the Obama administration may end up be the weakest since the 1800’s.
A rare time when I disagree with your analysis, or this portion of it:
The Reps will never do that, not on this, or not on this issue.
As for the O Administration’s “decades of comity”, EW got that right: fucking nuts!
Here’s a piece of forgotten history — no link, because never officially released in this country, and the text not online, but from the report of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, 1976… the Pike Committee Report.
Re “Selective Briefings” (from a time when Congress had balls; emphases are added):
In a footnote to this section of the report, the Committee released a memo to Chief of Western Hemisphere Section of CIA relating how Senator Jackson used the CIA Oversight Committee to protect info from getting to The Church Committee or the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the case of “ITT funds for use in Chile in 1970 for support of political parties. The memo, from “[Redacted]”, concludes:
So much for “this fundamental compact between the Congress and the President.”
Much gratitude to you, Marcy, for carrying the water on this issue.
”If we switch two Democrats for two Republicans on the Appropriations committee and skip all the Leaders in general, that’s close enough to Gang of Eight, isn’t it?”
Apparently that really is sufficient.
Just thinking out loud here…With Rahm E as his COS, doesn’t that mean there is expanded notification beyond the Gang of Eight currently? So what’s the big deal with the Intel Authorization Bill anyway President O?
He who has secrets cannot be trusted.
okay, I read, or at least skimmed the .pdf for the full text
Frankly, I think this is also a money quote- but, that said I don’t get the full implication. But, my cursory reading leaves me thinking it means “I want to be able to do whatever I want, whenever I want.”
Sounds kinda Cheneyese to me.
Confusedly yours, VG
I just keep thinking that there must be some part of the puzzle that we don’t have that might make Obama’s behavior seem more congruent. I didn’t see him as a savior but he has let me down on every single issue that mattered to me.
1) the constitution
2) banking and finance
3) torture
4) health care
What is it that we don’t know…what happened between his being elected and his serving the country? Why did he revise his position on some of these issues and why is he helping to run cover for the crimes of the bush administration. What is it that we don’t know?
Nothing changed other than he got elected. Obama has always been a political creature. Name one issue he is famous for pursuing other than getting himself elected to the different offices along the way. There are none. I would say that if you really look at his historical record, what little there is of it, he has been fairly consistent in saying what it takes to get elected; that is what he just did. People imprinted their own desperate hopes and dreams onto his canvas and now they don’t like the picture.
Well I think the pictures of Michelle’s couture for the Obamas European Summer soiree have been just fine. I especially liked the bright yellow presentation for Rome. Someone has to people the abandoned halls of European aristocracy.
It ain’t like it used to be when one might rub elbows with a Duke and Dauphin on a fit raft floating big muddy.
Well, I agree that there were plenty of signs in his history and during the campaign to have predicted some of his behavior. As I have shared…I was never in the “he’s a savior” corner. But I did think he might protect the constitution a little bit instead of continue to gut it!
I just keep thinking that Nader was right. He made his point with me…but it took this administration for me to really “see” it. Both sides are thoroughly compromised. We need a strong independent with charisma…and I don’t see this person any where at this time. It’s sad when all I can think about is getting rid of Obama so we can have our constitution back.
Here’s a link to the testimony of Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld as part of a panel before the House Judiciary subcommittee about the Military Commissions System.
http://judiciary.house.gov/hea…..090708.pdf
He criticizes Pres. Obama for his stance on using this broken system, on using coerced testimony, on allowing hearsay, and indefinite detention. I hope everyone will pass this around if they haven’t already.
It is even more disappointing because Constitutional Law was supposed to be Obama’s area of expertise. He, more than most, should know better and that, as Vandeveld said, even if you do manage to get convictions under these conditions, they will eventually be overturned by the Supreme Court.
What is it that we don’t know?
If we knew, it would not be a secret, would it? Sometimes secrets are important. What he knew before he was briefed as President, clearly changed afterward, along with certain positions. Is it related to big business control of communications technology and sharing arrangements with other countries? The Presidents, both Obama and Bush, do not have all the power, but they should be able to retain the power to keep important National Security secrets a secret. My guess is that whatever it is that we don’t know there is unconstitionality involved that each President inherits. “It” must be capable of such a threat that they choose not to disclose it… for fear of the information being available to the “enemy”. It must be a problem seeking a solution.
It’s a problem seeking a place to hide.
OT, but this could get interesting. Doug Hampton, the cuckolded (look it up) husband in the Ensign affair tells an interesting story about the “Family”:
Coburn helped Hampton shake down Ensign?
forget respect, that asshole works for ME
why does anybody assume we’re supposed to respect these people
have any of you ever met a politician ???
(wink)
and can somebody splain to me why the wolf blitzer and the “best Political Team On Television” are interviewing Michael Jackson’s dermatologist ???
what a fucking country
Didn’t take long for Obama to reveal his total lack of character, did it.
BTW, the internet journalism is getting through to them. Back before the election I signed up for e-mails from the Obama campaign. Got one today, asking that I work to “stop the Obama smear campaign”. heh,heh,heh
The intellectually elite seldom realize that they smear themselves.
I always had my doubts about him, but I hoped. False hope, false change.
Fine work, Marcy.
I hope you wrote back with some choice words.
They make it hard to “reply” to their e-mails: choices always seem to be “I’ll give this much, no, I’ll give this much.” But I take a little time and hunt around for an address & give ‘em an earful.
Not too long a rant — after all, it’s just some grum in the basement who’s reading these things — but enough to let ‘em know that although I got on their mailing list, they’re no longer my Valentine.
17
Just saw that WO. Sure sounds like The Family has a weird sense of family values.
And a bizarre belief that women are incapable of agency in their own affairs.
Obama is turning out to be a major disappointment.
Enjoy.
We can not grant you that power any longer sir. Your predecessor abused this power to begin 2 wars, rape the treasury and commit war crimes. He also used it to wiretap all Americans that he chose without warranty, and anyone in any country of the world.
Congress must take it away and you must learn to work with them for a stable representative government. You are welcome to lock someone in irons if they violate the security of the action, and then explain such actions if you feel it is required. But you can not have the privilege of secrecy that can be withhold from the members of Congress that are supposed to be monitoring your actions.
Sorry. You are asking what President Dick Cheney would ask for, and this is deeply disturbing.
yikes, two spelling errors, sorry.
Barack Obama has done what only Karl Rove could imagine. He has turned his two greatest strengths – his speaking ability and his scholar’s knowledge of America’s Constitution – and used them to threaten the aspirations of middle Americans that their government work for and protect them. He is seeking to institutionalize and expand the excesses of Dick Cheney’s vision of executive power. He is making Cheney’s nightmare into his dream.
Mr. Obama is protecting the Beltway, its corporate funders and its legion of outsourced “intelligence”, defense and other contractors. His claim that he is committed to positive change and open government is laughable. His actions demonstrate that he is just a Chicago pol with more taste and a better hairstyle than his state’s former governor.
The man’s deceit (or sell-out) is not going unnoticed. And he keeps demonstrating who he really is (who owns him–and it’s not We the People) more and more every day by pulling stuff like this “fundamental compact” crap. Link.
Huffpo links to you here, EW.
Apologies for the O/T. McNamara knifed LBJ in the back:
“The secret was [McNamara’s] deliberate deceit of President Lyndon B. Johnson on Aug. 4, 1964 regarding the alleged attack on US warships in the Gulf of Tonkin.”
Link.
if the republicans had any brains at all, they’d simply cut the bush administration loose and form strange bedfellows with civil libertarians and triangulate their way out of their exile. just throw bush under the bus as so many conservatives have, and tie those identical practices around the necks of the obama administration.
obama and all his corny rhetoric: love how the “urgency of now” became give us some time, he doesn’t have a magic wand, wait until the next term, or 12 dimensional chess.
smell the changiness
If you work for Dems, this is the kind of shit you get.
If you work altogether to defeat just one Dem House member– I don’t care who — you can wield power. And defeat this shit in short order.
McCain doing this would not be a disappointment: it would be his meeting expectations, which itself would be something of a surprise.
Obama doing this is a thumb in the eye for most of the people who helped elect him. He’s becoming a more loquacious and persuasive, seemingly caring William McKinley, content to carry the water for the backroom boys and for the ruthless ambitious part of himself that he never lets out much. He’s not a McKinley in the sense that Hugh and bmaz have said all along, he’s doing these things because that’s what he is.
Progressives have their work cut out. They won’t need merely to enable a willing president to do what he would prefer, but finds politically difficult. This is an unwilling president who needs to be less gently persuaded that not supporting progressive causes will create more political and social difficulties than will his caving to the Right.
using “Gang of 8” limitations only to meet extraordinary circumstances affecting the vital interests of the United States
like torture, disappearing children, sexing up dossiers for wars, engaging in massive FISA felonies, etc.
For less extraordinary circumstances, like violating the NSA and even IIPA by planting national security information in domestic press to inlfluence domestic politics — President’s have just skipped Congress totally.
Conspiracy, comity, whichever, whatever.
Sarah Palin will do a much better job! Let’s help her get elected. Send your hard earned money to her to remove the filthy piece of garbage that is in there now, because we know Sarah will overturn Bush & Obama’s mess:
http://sarahpac.com/
Jodi, is that you?
It becomes clearer and clearer with each passing day that “The Obama King” is nothing more than War/Criminal POS!!
If Sarah Palin thinks President Obama is a war criminal/POS then I do too!
“…decades of comity between…
No, the Church Committee, which happened, was certainly not an instance of “comity”. It was something else, and that thing could happen again.
But is it worth the effort? The intelligence community has been growing, in a manner more or less unchecked, for the past sixty-five years. Most of Obama’s people are in their thirties and forties, and their sense of history has to be affected by this fact (we can’t even call it “amnesia”, because most of them weren’t around, politically speaking, for the first fifty years).
And yes it’s worth the effort, because fighting back is instructive.
Brilliant point, alabama.
Putting Obama in the position of “instructee” instead of what he thinks his position is, that of “instructor”…
“Professor of Constitutional Law”, my ass
Yes, well, influencing world events through espionage and covert action is much much cheaper — and much much harder to trace — than doing it through conventional military action. (This by way of analyzing it, not advocating for it.)
Reminds me of Tofflers Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth, and Violence at the Edge of the 21st Century. He who has or controls knowledge, or access thereto, wins. As has been stated on FDL multiple times, no Prez wants to cede power. Hopefully some future Congress, with real cajones and deference to the Constitution with slap the Executive down hard and end the 60 year progress of the Imperial Presidency. Just fooling ;-[
“…..The Gang of Eight briefing system has been a central instrument of abuse of power, by which the President does things that violate fundamental tenets of the Constitution, but gets legal “sanction” for those things by telling eight four people who are all but hamstrung to do anything about those things.”
While the Gang of 8 does not take advantage of the Speech and Debate clause to constrain clearly unconstitutional and illegal acts in a responsible manner, Scott Horton reports that a British member of Parliament has used parliamentary privilege to expose British government complicity in a torture-rendition scandal on the floor of the House of Commons:
http://harpers.org/archive/2009/07/hbc-90005310
thanks for staying on top of it, emptywheel, and calling FOUL when it’s needed.
The whole thing reminds me of a book by Maureen Webb “Illusions of Security: Global Surveillance and Democracy in teh Post 9/11 World.”
In it she shows how the intelligence apparati of G8 nations are structured at the multinational level to circumvent the laws of those very same countries. They achieve the circumvention by having one country perform the illegal actions for another country and then share the essentially “illegally”-obtained information transnationally.
http://www.democracynow.org/20…..llance_and
What’s the Gang of Eight?
Well, it ain’t a new band twice as good as Gang of Four, if that’s any hint.
jeff kaye@46
thanks, jeff.
lord how our press fails to inform us!
thank god for the internet.
it worked for the russians people in the 90’s: sort of works for the chinese people these days.
maybe it can work for the american people against the slowly building force of an unhindered, unsupervised president.
Durn North Koreans! (A wouldbe link to a large collection of Church and Rockefeller Committee docs)
Meanwhile,
Covert Action in Chile, a Church report release by FOIA to the State Dept.
…