I’ve been waiting for someone with the patience and resources of Job to pore over last weeks NSA OIG Report on the PSP and figure out what the "Other Intelligence Activities" are [were] – the ones not included in the "Terrorist Surveillance Program." Neither Yoo’s Memos nor this Report make them explicit. But what we all think is that they were data-mining streams of communications from everybody calling or being called from overseas [Like Joe College better not say "We went to the Moulin Rouge last night and got bombed. We had a blast!"]. Marcy’s post is as always dense and inclusive. She concludes:
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The O.I.A. ["Other Intelligence Activities"] included massive data-mining.
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The showdown at the hospital [Comey versus Gonzales] was about these O.I.A.s.
Comey and Goldsmith could justify the Terrorist Surveillance Program going around the F.I.S.A. court based on the Authorization for Use of Military Force [A.U.M.F.] passed on September 18, 2001. This was a "war powers" argument. But the Defense Appropriations of 2004 [an Act of Congress] said:
Sec. 8131:
[snip]
(b) None of the funds provided for Processing, analysis, and collaboration tools for counterterrorism foreign intelligence shall be available for deployment or implementation except for:
(1) lawful military operations of the United States conducted outside the United States; or
(2) lawful foreign intelligence activities conducted wholly overseas, or wholly against non-United States citizens.
Since this passed after the A.U.M.F., they could not argue that the A.U.M.F. covered these O.I.A.s since they were specifically forbidden; however, Bush had tacked on his usual "I am God and can do whatever I want" Signing Statement onto the Defense Appropriations Bill.
Why would I bore you with these details? Several reasons:
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This was the Administration’s M.O., finding sleazy ways around the Law.
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Bush tacked Signing Statements onto any Congressional Bill that attempted to limit him in any way. This was Cheney’s and Addington’s abiding hobby – reading every Congressional Act to find evidence of any attempt to limit the King[s], and blocking it with a Signing Statement.
Please note that:
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The DoJ [Comey and Goldsmith] did not recognize the validity of these Signing Statements.
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Even the Bush Administration was afraid to rely on these absurd Signing Statements, and continued trying to get DoJ approval.
Finally:
…Credible or not [coming from a guy who approved the program on the same day he was read into it], Ashcroft pointed to Yoo’s inaccurate description of these OIA when he explained why he had authorized the program in the past.
In a May 20, 2004 memorandum, Ashcroft wrote that it was not until Philbin and later Goldsmith explained to him that aspects of the NSA’s Other Intelligence Activities were not accurately described in the prior Authorizations that he realized that he had been certifying the Authorizations prior to March 2004 based on a misimpression of those activities.So why didn’t Yoo include these activities in his original opinions? We know that the Administration briefed Congress – at least partly – on the data mining aspects of the program; presumably, that’s why Jello Jay invoked TIA when he wrote his letter to Cheney. Did the Gang of Four get a full briefing on July 17, 2003, on the eve of defunding any data mining?
Or did Yoo – and the rest of the Administration – leave Congress and much of DOJ in the dark about the extent to which they were data mining the communications of American people?
They specifically broke the Law and hid it from Congress…
They specifically broke the Law and hid it from Congress…
They specifically broke the Law and hid it from Congress…
I’m coming around Mickey. I’ve been with Barry on this one…the let’s move forward notion. But the degree to which a few sick men were able to twist and pervert the fundamentals of our jurisprudence and the system of checks and balances between and among co-equal branches of government, the rock of our democratic experiment, went way way way too far. Makes Dick Nixon look like a vendor of candy floss at a summer festival. They treated the whole of us as they would the frog placed in a darkened pot of cool water and then they just kept turning up the heat by degrees. There may be capacity issues out at Leavenworth but I say to hell with it. Give ’em all a pallet on the floor.
“They treated the whole of us as they would the frog placed in a darkened pot of cool water and then they just kept turning up the heat by degrees.”
Your comment lands in the middle of my own thoughts today. It’s about how they treated us that I think sticks in my craw. I understand the need fo secrecy in matters military. I even understand putting things in the best light in public. I guess I’ve done both at one point or another in my own doings.
But I don’t get playing us for chumps to placate while they did whatever they thought needed doing. It’s like they seized the right to screw things up beyond any recognition, with no chance of being helped by wiser heads. It was as if “we the people” were the real enemy.
Somehow, we got to say, “You can’t do that. It isn’t a game, it’s the real deal.” I don’t care about Leavenworth, or a truth commission. I want something like a granite monument in Washington, “the wall of lies.” It needs to be in civics books and history books. They can stay on their ranches and clear brush as far as I’m concerned [two exceptions: Rove and Yoo. Leavenworth would be okay for them].
There once was a monsignor(RCatholic priest) in out family parish who did some unspeakable things to children and family members who were grieving for their love ones who had died and he had some awful fetish I guess you might call it but he had to kiss and touch the breast of these woman. They were shocked and horrified. One of the woman was my Mother. None of the woman did anything until he did it to a child(and other things) while her grandmother lay dying in the next room. The women all testified and many in the parish didn’t believe that he could do anything that awful. He did go for treatment in Maryland where the court was told that he had been examined and he had a real problem. My point of this long boring story is that he kept coming to weddings and funerals etc like he was this innocent person. It use to really upset the victims and their families to see him all the time but after the big church scandals accross the country he was banned from ever coming to the family church ever again. Mickey, I like your idea best. Put in History books what this awful duo did and how they destroyed so many lives with their lies and made America less safe. I could live with that bit of true history.
I want it in the history books, and an anti-monument in D. C. would be nice, too.
But what I mostly want is to have them testify, on the record, and on live TV, before a Fitzgerald-like investigator — and have to bear the shame of public humiliation — which of course would then become part of the archives and mentioned in the history books.
I guess I do have a streak of vengeance. I can do without prison time, but I do want to see some public humiliation.
I also agree with Mickey and Ralph Roughton: at the least, their misdeeds need to be known and recorded. And, as long as I’m talking about what I’d like to see happen (even though there’s no chance it will), let’em also perform the rite of passage of publicly acknowledging their wrongs and their responsibilities, thereby starting a healing process. There are civilized countries where elected officials who screw up actually take ownership of their mistakes. But you don’t hear it so much here. Reagan? “Mistakes were made†was all we got. Nixon? “I am not a crook.â€