Crazy Pete Hoekstra’s NSA Dirty Work and Nidal Hasan
I’m almost ready to post my next working thread on the EFF documents. But pages 121 through 125 of the OLC2 set deserves its own post.
It’s basically an email from Chris Donesa, a Republican HPSCI staffer, to a bunch of people at DNI, DOJ, and NSA who had been involved in the Protect America Act passage, followed by a letter Crazy Pete Hoekstra sent to NYT’s Bill Keller. He includes the message, “Happy Tuesday to all” as the only explanation.
The copy of Crazy Pete’s letter in the EFF documents is hard to read, but luckily Crazy Pete sent a copy to Human Events, too. Crazy Pete’s letter is, in turn, a response to an editorial the NYT ran after Congress caved on the PAA and a James Risen article reporting on what the legislation actually did.
Crazy Pete claims to refute the editorial and (more importantly) the Risen article.
Only, the EFF document dump makes it clear that Crazy Pete is, um, lying his ass off.
Every single one of Crazy Pete’s “refutations” completely avoid the charges made by the NYT, even while hiding the now provable fact that the NYT was absolutely correct. For example, this “refutation:”
• Misstatement and Exaggeration: “[T]he court’s only role will be to review and approve the procedures used by the government in the surveillance after it has been conducted.”
o Facts: This is a false and selective characterization of the plain provisions of the law. Third parties who are asked to assist the intelligence community under the law may challenge the legality of any directive by filing a petition with the FISA Court.
Much of the discussion leading up to passage of PAA, we now know, involved preventing prior court review at all cost. Read more →