Obama’s Signing Statement Disappears Whistleblowers

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When I suggested the other day that Obama’s memo on signing statements was actually very troublesome–in that there’s no transparency for which of Bush’s signing statements Obama plans to keep and in that we never learn which of those Bush relied on to break the law–a few people suggested I was being cynical. Really, the most common interpretation of the memo went, the memo was a sign of change we can believe in, a new willingness to be bound by law.

As it turns out, the memo appears to have been released (almost two months into Obama’s term, after all) to lay the groundwork for Obama’s first signing statement.

Charlie Savage (who wrote the book on this stuff) lays out the contents–mostly statements saying Obama refuses to spend money with the oversight from Congress they’ve demanded.  

One of the budget bill’s provisions that Mr. Obama said he could circumvent concerns United Nations peacekeeping missions. It says money may not be spent on any such mission if it entails putting United States troops under a foreign commander, unless Mr. Obama’s military advisers so recommend.

“This provision,” Mr. Obama wrote, “raises constitutional concerns by constraining my choice of particular persons to perform specific command functions in military missions, by conditioning the exercise of my authority as commander in chief on the recommendations of subordinates within the military chain of command, and by constraining my diplomatic negotiating authority.”

[snip]

But a majority of the challenged provisions are those allowing money to be reallocated to a different program only with the approval of a Congressional committee. Mr. Obama called the provisions “impermissible forms of legislative aggrandizement” and declared that while executive-branch officials would notify lawmakers of any reallocation, “spending decisions shall not be treated as dependent on the approval of Congressional committees.”

So much for power of the purse.

The provision I’m most worried about, however, is one on whistleblowers. You see, the President who has promised transparency, apparently doesn’t want transparency to Congress when an executive agency fucks up.

He also raised concerns about a section that establishes whistle-blower protections for federal employees who give information to Congress.

“I do not interpret this provision,” he wrote, “to detract from my authority to direct the heads of executive departments to supervise, control and correct employees’ communications with the Congress in cases where such communications would be unlawful or would reveal information that is properly privileged or otherwise confidential.”

Read more →

Cheney’s Assassination Squads

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You know how Sy Hersh promised bombshells after Bush left office? Well this seems like his first installment–though it also sounds like he’s not ready to put this in print yet. (h/t RawStory)

At a “Great Conversations” event at the University of Minnesota last night, legendary investigative reporter Seymour Hersh may have made a little more news than he intended by talking about new alleged instances of domestic spying by the CIA, and about an ongoing covert military operation that he called an “executive assassination ring.”

Hersh spoke with great confidence about these findings from his current reporting, which he hasn’t written about yet.

In an email exchange afterward, Hersh said that his statements were “an honest response to a question” from the event’s moderator, U of M Political Scientist Larry Jacobs and “not something I wanted to dwell about in public.”

[snip]

“Yuh. After 9/11, I haven’t written about this yet, but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven’t been called on it yet. That does happen.

"Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command — JSOC it’s called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. …

"Congress has no oversight of it. It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths.

"Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us. [emphasis original]

Mind you, I think this refers to two different things: Read more →

DiFi’s Whitewash

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Last week, when I put you all to work (while I was on vacation–sorry) to find out whether your members of Congress supported some kind of investigation into Bush Administration crimes, fatster reported back DiFi’s ambivalence about any such investigation.

According to the Washington staffer who answered my call just now, DIFI has not yet commented on what her position will be. Imagine that.

DiFi’s support or not is critically important since–as the new Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee–she’ll have significant say about whether or not we investigate what the Intelligence Community did under Bush.

Well, today the largest paper in DiFi’s state reports what appears to be DiFi’s slowly evolving response: an investigation that the American people don’t get to see. Otherwise known as a whitewash.

The Senate Intelligence Committee is preparing to launch an investigation of the CIA’s detention and interrogation programs under President George W. Bush, setting the stage for a sweeping examination of some of most secretive and controversial operations in recent agency history.

The inquiry is aimed at uncovering new information on the origins of the programs as well as scrutinizing how they were executed — including the conditions at clandestine CIA prison sites and the interrogation regimens used to break Al Qaeda suspects, according to Senate aides familiar with the investigation plans.

Officials said the inquiry was not designed to determine whether CIA officials broke laws. "The purpose here is to do fact-finding in order to learn lessons from the programs and see if there are recommendations to be made for detention and interrogations in the future," said a senior Senate aide, who like others described the plan on condition of anonymity because it had not been made public.

[snip]

The senior aide said that the committee had no short-term plans to hold public hearings, and that it was not clear whether the panel would release its final report to the public.

[snip]

Senate aides declined to say whether the committee would seek new testimony from former CIA Director George J. Tenet or other former top officials who were involved in the creation and management of the programs.

The Senate investigation will examine whether the detention and interrogation operations were carried out in ways that were consistent with the authorities and instructions issued in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, officials said.

The panel will also look at whether lawmakers were kept fully informed. Read more →

The AIPAC Prosecution Suffers A Crippling Blow

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images5.thumbnail.jpegMost of you know about the AIPAC criminal case that has been simmering below the main media radar since it was filed in May, 2005. In a nutshell, the indictment alleges that Lawrence Franklin, a DOD/Pentagon official working in Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s office (with everyone’s favorite public servants Doug Feith and Paul Wolfowitz), passed top-secret information relating to Iran and Iraq to Steve Rosen, AIPAC’s then-policy director, and Keith Weissman, a senior Iran analyst with AIPAC. Franklin pled guilty and was sentenced in January, 2006.

In the three, count em three, years since Franklin’s plea, the government has pressed on with the prosecution of Franklin’s co-defendants Rosen and Weissman. That may be nearing an end though with a critical decision issued by the trial judge in the case, Judge Thomas Ellis of the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA) on February 17. The opinion is not only important for the AIPAC case, but for many, if not all, of the secrecy cases that are currently in play in Federal courts across the country.

A little background is in order. The defendants, Rosen and Weissman, sought to introduce the expert testimony of Bill Leonard, a retired United States government official with substantial experience and expertise in the field of information classification, as part of their defense at trial. Leonard, who retired last year, was formerly the director of the government’s Information Security Office responsible for oversight of the entire U.S. classification system.

Leonard, from all appearances, was willing to testify, however, fearing prosecution himself, he insisted on a subpoena and then personally moved to quash the subpoena on the ground that his testimony might be barred by 18 USC 207, which restricts the activities of former executive branch officers and employees. The government, not wanting to be crucified by their own former guy, through the Department of Justice joined in Leonard’s motion to quash. Defendants Rosen and Weissman’s attorneys, obviously, opposed the motion to quash and argued that section 207 did not preclude Leonard’s testimony, and asserted that the court should enter an order directing Leonard to give said testimony at trial. Effectively, Leonard was seeking cover from the court so he could not get jerked around by the government for being wiling to testify. Very smart move by a very smart man, especially since the Bush/Cheney DOJ prosecutors were threatening that he might be liable for up to a year in jail if he testified.

Read more →

Susan Collins: I Stand With Crazy Pete the Twit-Leaker in Opposing Intelligence Whistleblowers

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I’ve been covering the misplaced priorities of Crazy Pete Hoekstra–who doesn’t want federal Intelligence Community employees to have a way of alerting Congress to fraud and wrong-doing without exposing classified information and/or losing their jobs, but who is happy to Twitter sensitive information about his and Minority Leader Boehner’s travels in Baghdad.

It seems that Susan Collins has the same misplaced priorities. She single-handedly axed the House-backed provision to include whistleblower protection in the stimulus package–and with it, prevented a key means of making sure taxpayer funds were spent wisely.

But, according to a person following the bill closely, Collins used today’s conference committee to drastically water down the measure, citing national security concerns as the reason for her opposition. In the end, the protections were so weakened that House negotiators balked, and the result was that the entire amendment was removed.

According to the person following the bill, Collins was the "central roadblock" to passing the protections.

To make matter worse, Collins is the ranking Republican on the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs commitee, which, as an oversight committee, might be expected to see its role as protecting whistleblowers. She also sits on the Senate appropriations committee, giving her a strong position from which to wield influence during today’s negotiations.

Though Senate leader Harry Reid supported the protections, said the source, he wasn’t willing to strong-arm Collins on the issue, given her central role in negotiations over the stimulus bill as a whole. [my emphasis]

I guess that about sums up the state of Republican approaches to both Homeland Security and Appropriations that they would work hard to deprive taxpayers of the protection from fraud and wrong-doing they need.  

BREAKING: Obama Continues Bush Policy On State Secrets

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Earlier this morning, Looseheadprop wrote about the case of Binyam Mohamed, the British subject tortured at the hands of the United States at Gitmo, including having his genitals carved selectively with a scalpel. The Mohamed case is of critical significance for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that there was an oral argument in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco this morning that was to provide a crucial test of the new Obama Administration’s willingness to continue the Bush policy of concealing torture, wiretapping and other crimes by the assertion of the state secrets privilege.

From an excellent article by Daphne Eviatar at the Washington Independent at the end of January:

President Obama’s sweeping reversals of torture and state secret policies are about to face an early test.
…
The test of those commitments will come soon in key court cases involving CIA “black sites” and torture that the Bush administration had quashed by claiming they would reveal state secrets and endanger national security. Legal experts say that the Bush Department of Justice used whatʼs known as the “state secrets privilege” – created originally as a narrow evidentiary privilege for sensitive national security information — as a broad shield to protect the government from exposure of its own misconduct.

One such case, dealing with the gruesome realities of the CIAʼs so-called “extraordinary rendition” program, is scheduled for oral argument before a federal appeals court in early February. The position the Obama administration takes in this case may be the first major test of its new policies on transparency in government.

Mohamed v. Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. involves five victims of CIA rendition, or “torture by proxy,” as itʼs also known. Abducted abroad, the men were flown by the CIA to cooperating countries whose agents interrogated them under torture. Because federal officials are usually immune from lawsuits, the men later sued the private aviation data company, Jeppesen — a subsidiary of Boeing, one of the largest federal defense contractors — that
knowingly provided the flight plans and other assistance necessary for the CIA to carry out its clandestine operations.

Well, the news being reported out of Courtroom One in San Francisco is not good and indicates that the Obama Administration has continued the walk of the oppressive shoes of the Bush/Cheney regime and has formally continued the assertion of state secrets.

The best hope for transparency on Read more →

Crazy Pete Hoekstra’s Misplaced Priorities on Keeping Secrets

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As I pointed out last week, Crazy Pete Hoekstra, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, says we can’t have whistleblower protection included in the stimulus package because it would compromise our national security if intelligence community whistleblowers could safely tell Congress (in a classified setting) about fraud and wrong-doing.

After which, Crazy Pete promptly went to Iraq and posted the classified details of his and John Boehner’s trip to his Twitter account.

A delegation led by House Minority Leader John A. Boehner , R-Ohio, arrived in Iraq earlier today, and because of Rep. Peter Hoekstra , R-Mich., the entire world — or at least Twitter.com readers—now know they’re there.

“Just landed in Baghdad,” messaged Hoekstra, a former chairman of the Intelligence panel and now the ranking member, who is routinely entrusted to keep some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets.

Before the delegation left Washington, they were advised to keep the trip to themselves for security reasons. A few media outlets, including Congressional Quarterly, learned about it, but agreed not to disclose anything until the delegation had left Iraq.

Nobody expected, though, that a lawmaker with such an extensive national security background would be the first to break the silence. And in such a big way.

Not only did Hoekstra reveal the existence of the lawmakers’ trip, but included details about their itinerary in updates posted every few hours on his Twitter page, until he suddenly stopped, for some reason, on Friday morning.

See, we can’t have whistleblowers share secrets in classified settings. Because that takes all the fun, for members of the Gang of Eight, out of sharing secrets via Twitter.

WaPo: You Should Give the $800 Billion Away with No Oversight

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The WaPo is joining Crazy Pete Hoekstra in his opposition to having whistleblower protection in the stimulus bill. To oppose whistleblower protection, they’re reduced to poo-pooing the notion that it’s sort of important to have oversight when you give $800 billion in government funds out.

The $800 billion stimulus package making its way through Congress is supposed to include measures to jump-start the economy — extension of unemployment benefits and food stamps, infrastructure programs to create jobs. But whistleblower protections? 

[snip]

But attaching the bill to the stimulus package under the pretext that stronger whistleblower protections will enhance fiscal accountability is disingenuous.

Uh, yeah. The last eight years of widespread fraud really proves that protecting whistleblowers before you give away billions and billions is just a "pretext."

Right.

But what the WaPo is really worried about is the same thing Crazy Pete is worried about: if you give whistleblower protection to federal employees, that means you give whistleblower protection to federal intelligence employees. And, the WaPo argues, you can’t have federal intelligence employees revealing fraud and wrong-doing if the President doesn’t want them to.

The measure extends such protections to employees who work in the intelligence arena, including those at the FBI, and would give such employees the unilateral right to disclose to congressional overseers classified material. The measure also calls for federal court review of executive branch decisions to revoke an employee’s security clearance. 

[snip]

The executive branch is constitutionally charged with protecting and controlling classified information. A legislative attempt to override the executive could very well be unconstitutional. It is, in any event, irresponsible to condone and essentially immunize an employee’s unilateral breach.

The Justice Department, as long ago as the Clinton administration, has vigorously opposed expanding whistleblower protections to national security employees.

Now, set aside the question of whether, at a time when we’re privatizing intelligence functions on a massive scale, it would be a good thing to make sure intelligence professionals have some means to report wrong-doing. Put aside the question of whether or not you’d like someone to be able blow the whistle if all that data the government has collected on you were used in improper ways.

Consider the fact that this is a newspaper attacking whistleblower protections.

There are two ways to think about this phenomenon, a newspaper attacking whistleblower protections. Perhaps this is just an indication that the WaPo no longer cares about exposing wrong-doing. Read more →

Obama, The Crawford Torture Admission & The Army Field Manual Lie

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dbamericasafe

In an earlier post I discussed the startling direct admission that the United States tortures terror detainees made public in last Wednesday’s blockbuster Bob Woodward piece in the Washington Post. As the Bush Administration’s hand picked convening authority for the military tribunals, otherwise known as the "Gitmo Show Trials", Susan Crawford’s admission carries the binding mark of credibility.

In this post, I want to explain the troublesome ramifications Crawford’s admission carries for the provisions in the Army Field Manual regarding the treatment and interrogation of detainees. And the Army Field Manual is a singularly important frame of reference because President-Elect Barack Obama famously staked his claim to being a torture reformer during the election by promising to restrict US detainee interrogation techniques to those contained in the Army Field Manual. President-Elect Obama is holding true to his word.

The proposal Obama is considering would require all CIA interrogators to follow conduct outlined in the U.S. Army Field Manual, the officials said.
…
However, Obama’s changes may not be absolute. His advisers are considering adding a classified loophole to the rules that could allow the CIA to use some interrogation methods not specifically authorized by the Pentagon, the officials said.

This is where Susan Crawford’s stark admission comes into play. As Crawford admits, most all of the techniques used on al-Qahtani were actually permissible, but the layering of techniques compounded them into unmistakable torture.

Crawford, 61, said the combination of the interrogation techniques, their duration and the impact on Qahtani’s health led to her conclusion. "The techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent. . . . You think of torture, you think of some horrendous physical act done to an individual. This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him, that hurt his health. It was abusive and uncalled for. And coercive. Clearly coercive. It was that medical impact that pushed me over the edge" to call it torture, she said.

Crawford has exposed to bright sunlight the lie that is Barack Obama’s, and other politicians’, simple minded reliance on the Army Field Manual as cover for their torture reform credentials. Interrogators can stay completely within the Army manual and still be engaging in clear, unequivocal torture under national and international norms, laws and conventions. Read more →

BushCo Drops All Charges against Andy Card's Cousin

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Just five days before the end of his term, Bush’s DOJ has dropped all charges against Andy Card’s cousin–Susan Lindauer–whom they had accused of being an unregistered agent for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. By dropping the charges at this time, the Administration:

  • Prevents Lindauer from proving at a trial that she was an intelligence asset working on behalf of the United States (though she says she’ll sue for damages)
  • Declines to try to prove that she was working on behalf of Saddam–and not the US–when she warned against invading Iraq
  • Succeeds in preventing embarrassing information (both because of the link to Card, and because it included solid warnings against Iraq) from coming out while Bush was still in office

Basically, this appears to be a story about an intelligence op that got too emarrassing, so the Administration first accused Lindauer of working for Saddam, and then, when she talked about her ties to US intelligence, they accused her of being crazy and got her committed. And now, they are attempting to avoid a public trial in which she could prove her case.

The bulk of the charges against Lindauer depend on this letter she sent to Andy Card (and copied to Colin Powell) on January 8, 2003, when BushCo was ratcheting up the pressure for war. In it she listed the concessions she believed she could negotiate with Iraq:

… what specific actions can be taken by Baghdad, so that President Bush can declare victory without going to War. What do you need? Cooperation on terrorism, including interviewing authority for the FBI? Does the U.S. want the Lukoil Contract? 

[snip]

[hand-written addition] The U.S. would come away with full democratic reforms–free elections, free opposition newspapers, and free student organization at Universities. 

Given the build up, you could declare a great victory from a formidable position of strength. You could keep U.S. troops in place for 6 months to monitor compliance. And you could do it all without war.

Even more than her promises to negotiate an agreement short of war (because I’m a little skeptical about all those "free elections" under Saddam) are her warnings:

But this War with Iraq will hurt us, too. In six weeks or six months, it won’t matter. Because when it hits, it will hit so fard it will not matter that there was ever a delay–The Iraqi people hate Americans, no matter what they think of Saddam. Read more →