Archive for category: emptywheel

No wonder BushCo wanted oversight of FISA totally out of the hands of the FISC. If I’m reading this WaPo article correctly, there were actually two rulings that went against the Administration–one in March, and one in May.

But in a secret ruling in March, a judge on a special court empoweredto review the government’s electronic snooping challenged for the firsttime the government’s ability to collect data from such wires even whenthey came from foreign terrorist targets. In May, a judge on the samecourt went further, telling the administration flatly that the law’swording required the government to get a warrant whenever a fixed wireis involved.

Indeed, there’s a sense that a lot of the Administration response came out of frustration with the Court:

The judges were sympathetic but said they believed that the law wasclear. "They said, ‘We don’t make legislation, we interpret the law,’ "the senior administration official said.

The rulings — whichwere not disclosed publicly until the congressional debate this month– represented an unusual rift between the court and the U.S.intelligence community. They led top intelligence officials toconclude, a senior official said, that "you can’t tell what this courtis going to do" and helped provoke the White House to insist thatCongress essentially strip the court of any jurisdiction over U.S.surveillance of communications between foreigners.

That’s kind of predictable. As we’ve seen, when the law rules against Republicans, they tend to dismiss the law–and the Courts judging it.

Steven Benen writes most of the post I was going to write (thanks Steve!) in response to the news that Pete Hoekstra is a big fat hypocrite about intelligence leaks. Steve links to Justin Rood’s coverage of Hoekstra leaking details about the supposedly secret intelligence budget; RawStory first noticed Hoekstra’s leak. And then Steve provides a chronology (how could I not love that?!?!?!) of Hoekstra’s wingnuttery:

Given Hoekstra’s hackish history, this week’s alleged disclosure ispar for the course. After all, Hoekstra has had a series of recentintelligence-related embarrassments.

• In November 2006, Hoekstra pushed the administration to publishonline a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. Theidea was to let far-right bloggers "prove" that Saddam had WMD, butHoekstra’s plan led to the accidental release of secret nuclear research, including a basic guide to building an atom bomb.
• In October 2006, Hoestra "stripped the credentials of a Democraticcommittee aide he believed may have leaked a then-classified documentto The New York Times. A month later, he quietly reinstated the aide’s access."
• In July 2006, Hoekstra called a humiliating press conferenceto announce, "We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq" –despite failing to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
• In June 2006, Hoekstra and Rick Santorum wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed, alleging that some officials in the intelligence community are attempting to destroy the Bush administration — and America itself.

I would add just one event to this chronology: In July 2006 Hoekstra wrote what was perceived as a critical letter–but was actually one solidly supporting some of the Cheney-Rummy moves to keep DOD in charge of certain areas of intelligence.

I raise that–and link to Steve’s post–because I think it important to understand Hoekstra as more than just an unmotivated hack. Rather, each step of his hackery can be understood largely as a move in a Neocon chess game over information, largely doing the bidding of Cheney.

Since I seem to be the only one interested in Lurita Doan now that Bush has apparently refused to fire her for clear Hatch Act violations, I thought I’d point out the interesting tidbit that shows up in a profile of Scott Bloch, the guy in charge of Office of Special Counsel, the office that carries out Hatch Act violations that Bush studiously ignores.

Meanwhile, the Doan matter is breeding some ironies. Before Blochofficially released his report, The Washington Post’s Web site obtaineda leaked copy in May. Rep. Thomas M. Davis III of Virginia, the topRepublican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee,contended the leak denied Doan any effective chance of answering heraccusers. Davis arranged to have Bloch brought before the committeelast month to ask if he authorized the leak, which Bloch denied doing.

Davis previously had been a Bloch defender and had praised the OSC fordramatically cutting back its backlog of personnel cases. But at thehearing, the congressman blew up at the witness, explaining that he’dobtained a personal e-mail by Bloch describing Davis as “acting likeDoan’s defense counsel” when she testified before the Oversightcommittee.

Davis then promised to wage what might be called a Blochian crusade: Heannounced his intention to corral Read more →

The smart lawyers who (I think) didn’t attend YKos have already posted some really important things on the FISA debacle this weekend. Go here, here, here, and here. Oh, and here’s one from a smart lawyer who was at YKos. But the short version is that Bush now has even more rights to wiretap than what he was known to have had under the secret programs that he instituted after 9/11, because the existing law, as distinct from what they claimed about the earlier program, does not require to show a plausible connection to Al Qaeda. Basically, if the government wants to collect my phone calls to my parents-in-law in Ireland and they’re willing to claim that the target of the tap is my parents-in-law and that a significant purpose of that collection is intelligence related, they’re going to get to hear about our plans to meet in South Carolina in the fall.

One thing that not enough people are emphasizing, though, is who gets to make these claims. If BushCo wants to tap my calls to my parents-in-law, then the only proof they need to offer, regarding who is the target and what is the value for intelligence collection, is the word of DNI Mike McConnell and AG Alberto Gonzales. Yup, a man whom much of Congress–to say nothing of clued in observers–believe to be a certifiable liar, is the guy who gets to tap my calls if he wants to claim it serves an important intelligence collection purpose. So a legislative process that should have been used to insist on the firing of Alberto Gonzales instead gave him and his lying eyes vastly increased power. Not to mention the fact that, at a time when we’re worried about Gonzales’ politicization of the judicial system, we’ve just moved more oversight out of the courts and into Gonzales’ pocket.

It has been over 50 days since Scott Bloch, the head of the Office of Special Counsel, sent Bush a letter advising that Lurita Doan be disciplined severely for her violations of the Hatch Act. Yet there she is, still in charge of the government’s credit cards as the Administrator of the GSA.

If Doan weren’t a Bush appointee, her fate would be clear–she would have been fired fifty days ago. But in this case, Bush has to fire her himself. And it appears that he has no intention of doing so.

I know that this will surprise no one. After all, Bush effectively pardoned the guy who was covering up Bush’s own involvement in the leak of Valerie Wilson’s identity. So why wouldn’t he effectively pardon the gal who decided to brainstorm ways to use government resources to get Republicans elected? And also, ensured that a company, Sun Microsystems, under active investigation for ripping off the federal government by charging it more than it charges private companies, would continue to be able to rip off the government.

There’s one more implication of this. If Bush isn’t going to fire Doan, then he’s surely not going to fire anyone else who might Read more →