The Thomas Drake issue had me thinking about an article from some years back about Jack Abramoff and his ties to IT companies who got enormous contracts from the NSA.I have always wondered if some of these deals were related to Drake’s complaint of excessive spending..may be or maybe not.

I could not recall where or by whom the piece was written.

Serendipity stepped in,and by sheer kismet,I found it in an ew thread from back in 2009 about Russeel Tice.To wit:

Abramoff’s NSA and Domestic Spying Scandal by leveymgWed Jan 25, 2006 at 10:25:59 AM PDT

The National Security Scandals of Jack Abramoff – Part II(Pt. 1, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/1/24/121156/129

While Jack Abramoff’s scandalous rip-off of Indian tribes is well know, his role as a GOP fixer for NSA and CIA contractors has gone virtually under the radar screen. Abramoff’s lobbying activities raise serious questions about the role of his corporate and foreign clients in compromising highly sensitive NSA and Capitol Hill communications networks, in domestic spying and in other illegal national security-related activities.

leveymg’s diary : Abramoff served as a conduit between the NSA and private companies that have become the focus of multiple criminal prosecutions and national security investigations, including the abuse of prisoners abroad, and alledged spying on Capitol Hill lawmakers by Abramoff clients. This has resulted in the gravest constitutional crisis since Watergate, as well as a massive damage to U.S. national security.
The 2001 Contract to Privatize NSA’s Surveillance Systems In 2001 Verizon, along with CACI (a defense contractor shepherded by Abramoff that heavily contributed to the GOP), was awarded part of a multi-billion dollar NSA contract to privatize the NSA’s information technology systems, capabilities that were then used by the Bush Administration to carry out illegal domestic spying. As part of that ten-year program, code-named Project Groundbreaker, NSA surveillance systems continue to be developed, operated and maintained by private sector IT companies. See, http://lists.jammed.com/…Washington PostAugust 1, 2001Pg.

A “security” alarm activated by sweaty armpits in Australia? Hahahahaha. Next to Vegas in summer, it’s the sunniest, hottest place to be this side of Death Valley or the Middle East.

I wonder how much American taxpayers are paying for similar software and “analysis” programs and the video, spectrum and other analyzers needed to “perceive” the data to be analyzed by it? Whose budgets? Which outsourced contracts and “servicers”? And what collateral commercial uses are being subsidized by them?

Lithwick’s summary of the transcript of the panel she moderated is heavy with ironic statements from the participants. John Yoo, for example, describes the president as has having a “box” of powers. S/he determines how close to the edge of that box s/he wants to go. Yoo’s job was, and that of his successors at OLC is, to define how big that box s and what’s inside it.

Mr. Yoo fails, however, to mention that his definition of that box, like his successors, is that it has whatever dimensions and contents the president demands. Mr. Yoo is a farce waiting to happen, a trait that Mr. Obama has enshrined in his DoJ successors.

D. Lithwick, Esq.’s, excerpts afford interesting vignettes; however, I think a full transcript would be more contextual. I suspect the column is taking a constrained view of what its content needs to be. Slate often tends to encourage its writers toward the editorial, and, in my recollection, prescinds from a Washington-Post sort of full reportage, as when WaPo obtains a previously suppressed document, or, evidently, in instances in which WaPo actually simply turns to Congressional Quarterly for content, as CQ often provides its own transcriptions.

I had wondered how Dahlia Lithwick would fare in the chair as moderator at what certainly was going to be a rather dispute laden colloquy. DL clasically does very well when there is latitude for her exquisite appreciation of humor.

The non-Slate image I recall of Mr. Yoo at the Aspen event appeared much more stark, than the photo Slate has appended to the Lithwick article. Slate would have the reader envision Yoo as cool, ice-watered, at a white cloth sheathed conference table, isolated, thoughtful.

I also had initial concern about how Mr. Romero would fare at the give and take of the conversation; I had known his work only during a few years in which his comments appeared prominently at the aclU website; where, often, he would appear brazen; not quite rash; but willing to speak colorfully, as a barrister might find to be a natural tone of presentation; and illustratively incisive.

I think what Lithwick has produced is a well shaped contour of her own concerns regarding a cluster of still-live governance questions.

But I think her article’s title, ‘The discussion we should have had…’, only describes a sort of stolidity which still permeates the public dialogs on what occurred during the time Mr. Gonzales was elaborating the sandbox, and Mr. Yoo was a librarian, of sorts.

Journalistically, I believe the caption [“You Say Torture, I Say Coercive Interrogation”] which precedes the article’s boldface title, likely is more of Dahlia’s own words than the article’s title proper [“The conversation about torture we should have had 10 years ago.”] The former, to my dramaturgic muse’s ears sounds much like a songtitle from the upbeat, zippy, early years of the Beatles, an epoch whose tunes I enjoy much still; expressive of the optimism of British youth of the time; though, in a sense, still Liverpudlian drear: “You say Goodbye, I say Hello”; or some such. It took rubberSoul to transition beyond the kind of juvenility of which the fab4 were complaining in that lyric. Though I would expect that even the Beatles rarely would go back to listen to that antediluvian verse writing for its content very much.

I suppose Beatles and Lithwick, both, continue to offer promise in passing beyond these sorts of absolutes; or, at least, that is my acoustic impression of what Dahlia is attempting to do in the article; and, for which I commend her nearly invisible editorializing, and Slate’s discrete abstention from muddying her message, beyond the obvious gaps in content. The piece also noticeably is structured in a way that link glosses have very few likely places to rest. It simply is a little more full reporting, from a reporter who cares. If this works, there is the single-page version of Lithwick’s post; it’s only about 1000 words of excerpted fragmented interchange.

Further on the Lithwick summary, Mr. Yoo claims that the “criminal justice paradigm” is what failed on 9/11, not routine security measures and the errors, mistakes and negligence in routine policing and security work. His “analysis”, his political preference, really, has thankfully not been followed in Europe. Despite also cutting back on civil liberties, European democracies have not chosen to discard democracy in favor of imperial rule.

Per Mr. Yoo, instead of fixing routine mistakes – meaning instead of accepting political accountability for what happened on CheneyBush’s watch – the Bush (and now the Obama) administration chose to replace the “criminal justice paradigm” with the security state paradigm.

Yoo excuses our imperial transformation by characterizing government actions after 9/11 as simply filling the security gap left by the “failed” criminal justice paradigm. To achieve that, he has had to substitute his own constitutional paradigm that displaces the law with political security. That requires an emperor/president who determines what “the law” is as he pleases. He just wears Armani instead of a toga and breastplate. Plus ca change and all that.

Thanks so much, Marcy, for linking to my story. I also have posted some of my own thoughts about what the TO story means at The Dissenter. I’ll let a quote from that speak here:

Is it not waterboarding just because you are forcefully held down and drowned, and not strapped to a board?….

In sum, the use of water torture and waterboarding or quasi-waterboarding can only represent a pattern of such kinds of torture, which has been kept out of the public eye through a combination of secrecy, and artfully framing the issue around a definition of waterboarding that is meant to exclude examination of the full use of such water-drowning torture.

What this investigation into the different instances of water torture by DoD proves is that the public discussion of waterboarding has been consciously limited by the government, which has hidden behind a definition of waterboarding that excludes the other, closely-related forms of torture it used.

An additional link that might be worth adding to EW’s excellent collection today via Sebastian Abbot, Kathy Gannon and Kimberly Dozier of the AP:

“Timing of US drone strike questioned

The American ambassador to Islamabad phoned Washington with an urgent plea: Stop an imminent CIA drone strike against militants on the Pakistani side of the Afghan border.

He feared the timing of the attack would further damage ties with Islamabad, coming only a day after the government grudgingly freed a CIA contractor held for weeks for killing two Pakistanis.

Ambassador Cameron Munter’s rare request – disclosed to The Associated Press by several U.S. officials – was forwarded to the head of the CIA, who dismissed it. Some U.S. officials said Leon Panetta’s decision was driven by a belief that the militants being targeted were too important to pass up, but others suspected that anger at Pakistan for imprisoning Raymond Davis for so long played a role…

[snip]

…The attacks have also strained the relationship between the U.S. State Department and the CIA, where officials argue that killing militants who threaten U.S. interests should take priority over political considerations, said U.S. officials.

That tension was clearly visible between Ambassador Munter and the CIA station chief in Islamabad, who recently left his post because of illness, said a senior Western official in the region.

“When the doors are closed they are shouting at each other, but once the doors are open they are congenial in front of the embassy staff,” said the official…”

@Jeff Kaye: Mighty fine work Jeff!

Though I disagree with some of TIME’s Massimo Calabresi’s analysis of Dahlia Lithwick ‘s Slate piece, I did find this tidbit interesting:

“…A former CIA official with direct knowledge of the program told me that of the two people who were waterboarded who named al-Kuwaiti as the courier, one gave the information up not as a result of the waterboarding but as a result of sleep deprivation. At least in the case of finding bin Laden, the information that came exclusively from waterboarding continues to shrink…”

Thanks, MadDog @15.

I agree the Lithwick piece looks very interesting, but being a work today, I’m not going to be able to read it until late tonight. Thanks, EW for the link.

The LA Times on Wyden’s anti-surveillance maneuver.
The Times hasn’t been reading your posts on the wiretapping: they missed all the wonderful nuggets that would have woken people up.

I see pain getting distributed all around – and nobody’s happy.

Normally, that’s a sign of damn good leadership in hard times.

Imvho, we need to hold open the possibility that Obama is trying the best he can to do the ‘right’ thing here – and be prepared to throw-in with him when our interests intersect.

He’s not the President we wanted, but he’ll be the last one of the carcass formerly called America, if everyone eschews skillful and principled relations with him to instead stand on the extremes of their own partisan points of view.

He needs us, and we need him – but only in wholesome, balanced ‘right’ ways.

For now, we may only have enough common ground and trust to get a rope-bridge up between us, but even that’s strong enough to transport Hope, and worthy of open invites to parley.

There’s a ‘right’ way out of this clusterfuck for everyone through shared sacrifice, if we can all just agree to be principled more than partisan in our deliberations and decision-making.

And then maybe just maybe that rope-bridge will turn into a highway that gets everyone moving Our America forward again.

It could happen…but only if we’re courageous enough to offer the possibility, even while we’re hurting.

@emptywheel: IMO, they’ve lied so much, and destroyed so much evidence, that you can’t believe what you hear, or even read in any particular document. Makes it harder for us, of course.

Thanks for including the al-Shabaabbit and also for the reference to the Holder/Kagan Doctrine on flogging and starving the poor and the crippled rather than letting any aid go through the hands of “terruhists”

I’m sure while he’s spooning the soup in to the bowls the glow of inner satisfaction from his Doctrine helps holder forget all about the dead children in Somalia.

Congrats, MadDog

@MadDog:
“a medic stepped out and knelt over the corpse. He injected a needle into bin Laden’s body and extracted two bone-marrow samples.”

FYI: This phrase “injected a needle” gives the wrong impression of a simple, quick test like drawing blood from a needle inserted into a vein.

Unless the army has special tools to extract bone marrow quickly, obtaining a bone marrow sample (from the iliac crest) usually is more akin to turning a cork screw against high resistance in order to get past the bone and into the marrow cavity.

ew wrote: “Leonard received permission and has now submitted that complaint.”

This is great news. Can Thomas Drake use this development to reclaim his government pension maybe?

Late, but…

In 2006, The Constitution Project wrote this Report:
The Cost of Justice: Budgetary Threats to America’s Courts [pdf].

Here’s a link to the press release.

CONSTITUTION PROJECT SAYS BUDGET CUTS THREATEN AMERICA’S COURTS. Report Names 14 States in Which Budget Cuts Threaten Effectiveness of Judicial System.
[…]

States cited in the report as the starkest examples of systems suffering from budgetary threats are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Minnesota, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Utah and Washington.

Something new from Dawn Johnsen
The simple case for the Affordable Care Act’s constitutionality; Scotus Blog; 8/3/11
http://tinyurl.com/3mkhj8s

sorry, that’s “intraosseous”, not interosseous