The President’s Surveillance Program

9 Comments

1. 

   robertdsc on July 11, 2009 at 10:58 am

   I wonder if President Obama has to wear an oxygen mask to climb the mountain of stuff that’s been swept under the Oval Office rug.

   • 

     BooMan on July 11, 2009 at 11:11 am

     releasing the IG report is a start.  The ball is now in Congress’s court.

2. 

   BooMan on July 11, 2009 at 11:13 am

   Statement of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold
   On the Inspectors General Report on President Bush’s Warrantless Wiretapping Program

   “This valuable report highlights just how outrageous and damaging the illegal warrantless wiretapping program really was.  Although more information can and should be declassified, the unclassified version of the report underscores the dangers of operating a hidden, illegal program for years.  It documents the internal conflicts and chaos surrounding the purported legal authorizations, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s highly misleading congressional testimony.  Notably, the report calls into serious question the repeated assertions from Bush Administration officials, especially during debate over the so-called Protect America Act and the FISA Amendments Act, that stopping the program would have had catastrophic results.

   “This report leaves no doubt that the warrantless wiretapping program was blatantly illegal and an unconstitutional assertion of executive power.  I once again call on the Obama administration and its Justice Department to withdraw the flawed legal memoranda that justified the program and that remain in effect today.”

   An elaboration from Feingold’s press secretary:

   In his statement, he called on the Obama administration to withdraw flawed legal memoranda that justified the program and that remain in effect today.  The memoranda Senator Feingold is referring to are outlined in this April 29th letter he sent to President Obama following the administration’s declassification of several OLC memoranda.  In particular, Senator Feingold stated in the letter that the “administration’s efforts should begin with the withdrawal of the already unclassified January 19,2006 Department of Justice Legal Authorities Supporting the Activities of the National Security Agency Described by the President (“NSA Legal Authorities White Paper”), which was affirmed as recently as January 15,2009 in the Memorandum for the Files Re: Status of Certain OLC Opinions Issued in the Aftermath of the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 by Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Steven Bradbury.”

3. 

   Oui on July 11, 2009 at 11:53 am

   .
   I put some thoughts on the same issue in my diary. I was confounded why Cheney would use the anthrax scare as an argument for the Patriot Act and (massive) intelligence gathering.

   VP and his staff received Cipro
   On the night of the Sept. 11 attacks, the White House Medical Office dispensed Cipro to staff accompanying Vice President Dick Cheney as he was secreted off to the safety of Camp David, and told them it was “a precaution,” according to one person directly involved.

   The other CIA dark secrets most likely are Cheney’s assassination squad and the massive data mining coordinated in Florida by Jeb Bush and his CIA drugs pals.

   "But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."

4. 

   on July 11, 2009 at 11:57 am

   I actually have a problem with giving the sole ownership of the surveillance program to Bush, because it gives the impression that without Bush there would be none of this.

   We now know that CIA renditions had started during the Clinton Administration. And we know that the Justice Department has been fighting to defend the massive heap of crap that was Bush’s body of intelligence initiatives. Apparently, Obama either doesn’t have the power or the fortitude to declassify enough of this for us to least know if the CIA was taking upskirt pictures or what.

5. 

   Arthur Gilroy on July 11, 2009 at 1:16 pm

   This shit has been on since J. Edgar Hoover’s heyday. It’s just more technologically evolved now. Is this feigned surprise that I’m hearing from y’all or what?  

   Booman writes:

   It had several other novel intelligence gathering programs that remain classified. I’d like to know whether they also violated the law.

   Please.

   Violated the law!!!???

   Number one…if no one knows what these people are doing, there is no “law” to be violated. If a criminal shoots a tree-dweller in the forest and no one sees or hears it…or even knows that he is a criminal or is in that forest at that moment or has a gun or what…where’s the criminal complaint?

   IT DOES NOT EXIST.

   Second…the laws themselves have been largely written (and almost totally unenforced) by people who are beholden to PermaGov controllers. It’s the Mexican cartel’s “¿Plomo o plata?” question (“Lead or silver?”) question raised to dizzying heights of complexity.

   “Play ball or we’ll plant stuff in the media that will get you defeated.”

   “Play ball and we will help you get elected. And rich, too.”

   “Play ball or we’ll fucking kill you and no one will ever know why.”

   “Play ball. We’re good for the country. Everything will collapse if you bring us down.”

   Etc., etc., etc.

   “Bush’s” surveillance? That knucklehead couldn’t even surveil his fucking toothbrush. The last president who tried to meddle too deeply into the workings of the PermaGov ended up dead in Dealy Plaza, and his brother followed him several years later.

   Wise up.

   Obama has.

   It’s not going away until the people demand it. And “the people” not only do not know it’s there, they are so media-tranced out that they really don’t give a shit anyway.

   I’m telling you now…this economic “collapse”? (It’s really just a long-overdue adjustment, folks. It’ll pass, and soon. Watch.) It was brought about by over 50 years of massive, greed-fueled malfeasance on the part of the ruling class through both RatPub and DemRat administrations, and the same thing is going to have to happen on the PermaGov level before this surveillance system as we know it it taken apart. A massive set of errors that lead to some sort of serious discomfort for the American people. Say…a successful cyberattack that shuts down much of the economy and the working infrastructure. Nothing short of a few months of real panic…and maybe (I hope I hope) a shutdown of the major media-hypnosis outlets…will wake them the fuck up. Lookit what happened when credit collapsed. Only then…when people couldn’t buy their gas guzzlers or pay their massively inflated mortgages…only then did the Madoff scapegoat walk its lonely path to the public slaughterhouse. Only then could PermaGov v2.5.1 start to reprogram the machine a little.

   Until that sort of collapse happens to our (snicker) vaunted national security apparatus, ain’t shit gonna happen.

   Bet on it.

   Meanwhile?

   Smile.

   You’re on Candid Camera.

   Bet on that as well. Better go get some ‘a dem poisonous tooth whiteners they’re trying to sell you on TV, folks, because it’s gonna be “Alright, Mr. DeMille. We’re ready for our closeup”-time for many years more if they don’t screw up any worse than has been their norm since the ’60s.

   

   Yup.

   Bet the house on it. You can’t make the mortgage anyway, right? May as well go whole hog plus postage.

   And…have fun.

   I am.

   AG

   • 

     SkeeterVT on July 11, 2009 at 4:57 pm

     The program IS illegal. What laws were broken, you ask?

     1. The Constitution of the United States — the SUPREME LAW of this country (Article VI, Section 2). More specifically, the Fourth Amendment of said Constitution, which explicitly bars the government from engaging in “unreasonable searches and seizures” without a court warrant.
     2. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which also bars the government from engaging in surveillance of American citizens on U.S. soil without a court warrant.
     3. A unanimous 1972 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court (United States v. Plamondon) which declared a similar warrantless surveillance program against domestic radicals by the Nixon Administration unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment. That decision was subsequently strengthened by a 1975 ruling by the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia — the nation’s second-highest court — that declared that a warrant is required even for foreign intelligence and national security surveillance. The Ford Administration did not appeal that ruling and thus it remains in force to this day.

     The Bush surveillance program is 100 percent illegal and unconstitutional without court warrants — PERIOD!    

     • 

       Arthur Gilroy on July 12, 2009 at 11:35 am

       I repeat…no “law” is actually broken until it has been proven to have been broken in a court of law that is powerful enough to back up its decision with serious punishment. Example? Sure.  It’s against the law to jaywalk in NYC, but since no one is ever prosecuted for the act that law simply does not exist in the real world.

       By the numbers:

       1-The “Constitution”? Give me a BREAK!!! The actual intent of the people who wrote that document…an intent that included keeping inferior races, economic levels and sexes in their rightful place below that of land-owning white men, by the way…has been shredded so many times in so many (just and unjust) ways that as far as I am concerned anyone who seriously refers to it as some sort of binding legal document rather than an entertaining artifact of a vanished time is either a politician doing his or her necessary business or a total fool.

       2-Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978?

       Please.

       Every police department in the country…from The Keystone Kops of KosKove Kounty right on through the FBI, CIA, ICE, NSA, Homeboy Security and the ones whose existence is so secret that they do not even have recognizable names…breaks that law every chance that they get.

       Warrants?

       Go watch that execrable propaganda series Law & Order some more.

       Wake the fuck up.

       3-A 1972 ruling by the Supreme Court? And why didn’t the criminal administrations of Ford, Reagan and the Bushes (And probably the Carter and Clinton administrations too) “not appeal that ruling?”

          A-Because to do so would have put their totally secret machinations into the plain light of day. Why appeal that which is unenforceable?

          B-Because the administrations themselves had little or no knowledge of what was going on. And were quite happy with the situation as long as the ship of state remained running on a fairly even keel.

       What?

       You think “Don’t ask; don’t tell” is a new concept?

       Get real.

       Lord save us from innocent leftiness shmoon like this one.

       I am sure that you mean well, Skeeter.

       So did my grandma, and she didn’t have a clue either.

       Wake up.

       Uncountable trillions are in play here, and cheating is rampant.

       Bet on it.

       AG

6. 

   on July 11, 2009 at 3:20 pm

   The story goes that Hoover’s collection of index cards had the goods on most important people in power. That ruled until Angleton showed up with pictures of Hoover and Clyde Tolson in delicto flagrante. The technology is better and there’s better ways to gather up more information on more people.

   As I pointed out, Eliot Spitzer, who spent his own money on a prostitute, was busted using new laws designed to catch drug money launderers and terrorists. Guess what? There are still plenty of drugs and we’re still fighting the war on terror. But that NY governor who was speaking out against the Wall Street frauds and mortgage scams is now silent.

   The FBI is not investigating Palin’s home improvements or Ensign’s hush money, though.

   Just saying.