I find the secrecy around the domestic surveillence OPR Report all the more interesting given that DOJ still hasn’t decided what to do about the 2006 White Paper used to justify warrantless wiretapping after Jim Comey and Jack Goldsmith realized the inherent powers argument failed.

Would more phones calls asking about the status help? One of us could post the phone number…OPR at least needs a statement about their secrecy around the OPR report.

O/T,but somewhat related in the bigger sphere of things:

Cerberus buys Dyncorp

ExecutiveBiz (blog) Cerberus slated to purchase DynCorp in $1.5 billion deal‎ – 10 hours ago

By Dana Hedgpeth WASHINGTON— Cerberus Capital Management, a New York-based private investment firm, is expected to buy DynCorp International of Falls Church …
Boston Globe – 354 related articles »

Cerberus to Buy DynCorp for $1.5 Billion – DealBook Blog – NYTimes.comApr 12, 2010 … DynCorp International, the private military contractor, said on Monday it has agreed to sell itself to Cerberus Capital Management for $1.5 …
dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/…/cerberus-to-buy-dyncorp-for-1-5-billion/

Cerberus Agrees to Acquire DynCorp in $1 Billion Deal (Update2 …Apr 12, 2010 … DynCorp is Cerberus’s third acquisition announced this year, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Cerberus agreed on March 25 to buy …
http://www.businessweek.com/…/dyncorp-to-be-acquired-by-cerberus-for-1-5-billion-update1-.html

Speaking of Yoonitary Yoo, I found this factoid. Although KSM has probably been tortured into a babbling idiot, a trial revealing neo-con secrets would help AQ. But a trial would probably reveal more Saudi Arabian complicity. Elena Kagan destroyed documents that had evidence showing AQ is controlled by Saudi Arabia. Elena Kagan and John Yoo, two peas in a pod of pod people.

Others who criticized Holder’s decision expressed concern about the nation’s ability to control classified information. In the Wall Street Journal, former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo wrote that trying KSM in civilian court would provide an “intelligence bonanza” for Al-Qaeda. While we shouldn’t be surprised by now of Yoo’s unparalleled ability to look the other way when the law repudiates his personal beliefs, it is worth noting that military commissions use the same law to protect sensitive national security evidence as the federal courts, the Classified Information Procedures Act (“CIPA”).

This whole Bush/Obama executive branch way of spying on Americans while torturing anyone they choose is pretty close to the Huston Plan back in Nixon’s day, Operation Gemstone. Supposedly John Mitchell nixed the idea but it looks like the acolytes who were in the shadows kept the plans around for future reference.

I’m new to this site, and having trouble following the complicated facts discussed, but I wanted to share something I found today re. John Yoo and ending the ban on assassination. Sorry if you already have this. Cynthia Papermaster, Berkeley

U.S. law professor proposes assassinating more suspected terrorists

By Paul M. Barrett
The Wall Street Journal

09/12/05 “Post Gazette” — — In June, about 100 people gathered at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank, to hear a lecture by John Yoo on “fighting the new terrorism.” Mr. Yoo recommended an unusual idea: assassinating more suspected terrorists.

A law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, he said his proposal would require “a change in the way we think about the executive order banning assassination, which has been with us since the 1970s.” Such a change is needed, he said, because it is wartime: “A nation at war may use force against members of the enemy at any time, regardless of their proximity to hostilities or their activity at the time of attack.”

Mr. Yoo, 38 years old, is no ordinary ivory-tower theorist. During a two-year stint at the Justice Department from 2001 through 2003, he wrote some of the most controversial internal legal opinions justifying the Bush administration’s aggressive approach to detaining and interrogating suspected terrorists.

Some of those memos have become public, but not all of them. Asked after his AEI talk whether there is a classified Justice Department opinion justifying assassinations, Mr. Yoo hinted that he’d written one himself. “You would think they — the administration — would have had an opinion about it, given all the other opinions, wouldn’t you?” he said, adding, “And you know who would have done the work.”

A spokesman for the Justice Department declined to comment.

Mr. Yoo is playing an instrumental role in redefining the murky area where law intersects with foreign policy. The change underpins President Bush’s claim that he possesses the sort of far-reaching emergency powers exercised by past presidents during conventional wars.

Mr. Yoo, like others in the academic clique known as “sovereigntists,” is skeptical of international law and the idea that international relations are ever based on principle, as opposed to self-interest. Mr. Yoo argues that the Constitution gives Congress limited authority to deter presidential actions in foreign affairs. The judiciary, he says, has almost none.

At the Justice Department, Mr. Yoo crafted legal arguments for the president’s power to launch pre-emptive strikes against terrorists and their supporters. He molded a theory for not applying the Geneva Conventions to captured terrorist suspects. And he interpreted the federal antitorture statute as barring only acts that cause severe mental harm or pain like that accompanying “death or organ failure.”