{"id":3341,"date":"2009-07-15T20:25:13","date_gmt":"2009-07-16T00:25:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=3341"},"modified":"2009-07-15T20:31:20","modified_gmt":"2009-07-16T00:31:20","slug":"broke-the-law-and-hid-it-from-congress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2009\/07\/15\/broke-the-law-and-hid-it-from-congress\/","title":{"rendered":"I smell a crime&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<br \/>\n<blockquote>\n<div align=\"center\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/emptywheel.firedoglake.com\/2009\/07\/15\/the-other-intelligence-activities\/\">The &ldquo;Other Intelligence Activities&rdquo;<\/a><\/strong><br \/>           By: <font color=\"#005555\"><strong>emptywheel<\/strong><\/font><br \/>          July 15, 2009<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div align=\"justify\">I&#8217;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 &quot;Other Intelligence Activities&quot; are [were] &#8211; the ones not included in the &quot;Terrorist Surveillance Program.&quot; Neither Yoo&#8217;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 &quot;We went to the Moulin Rouge last night and got <strong>bombed<\/strong>. We had a <strong>blast<\/strong>!&quot;]. Marcy&#8217;s post is as always dense and inclusive. She concludes:<\/div>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\">The <strong>O.I.A.<\/strong> [&quot;Other Intelligence Activities&quot;] included <u>massive<\/u> data-mining.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\">The showdown at the hospital [Comey versus Gonzales] was about these <strong>O.I.A.<\/strong>s.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div align=\"justify\"><strong>Comey<\/strong> and <strong>Goldsmith<\/strong> could justify the Terrorist Surveillance Program going around the F.I.S.A. court based on the <strong>Authorization for Use of Military Force [A.U.M.F.]<\/strong> passed on September 18, 2001. This was a &quot;war powers&quot; argument. But the <strong>Defense Appropriations<\/strong> of 2004 [an Act of Congress] said:<\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<div align=\"justify\"><strong>Sec. 8131:<\/strong><br \/>     [snip]<br \/>     (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:<br \/>     (1) lawful military operations of the United States conducted outside the United States; or<br \/>     (2) lawful foreign intelligence activities conducted wholly overseas, or wholly against non-United States citizens.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div align=\"justify\">Since this passed <u>after<\/u> the <strong>A.U.M.F.<\/strong>, they could not argue that the <strong>A.U.M.F.<\/strong> covered these <strong>O.I.A.<\/strong>s since they were specifically forbidden; <u>however<\/u>, Bush had tacked on his usual &quot;<em><strong>I am God and can do whatever I want<\/strong><\/em>&quot; <strong>Signing Statement<\/strong> onto the <strong>Defense Appropriations Bill<\/strong>.<\/div>\n<hr width=\"50%\" size=\"1\" \/>       <\/p>\n<div>Why would I bore you with these details? Several reasons:<\/div>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\">This was the Administration&#8217;s M.O., finding sleazy ways around the Law.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\">Bush tacked Signing Statements onto any Congressional Bill that attempted to limit him in any way. This was Cheney&#8217;s and Addington&#8217;s abiding hobby &#8211; reading every Congressional Act to find evidence of any attempt to limit the King[s], and blocking it with a Signing Statement.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div>Please note that:<\/div>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\">The DoJ [Comey and Goldsmith] did not recognize the validity of these Signing Statements.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\">Even the Bush Administration was afraid to rely on these absurd Signing Statements, and continued trying to get DoJ approval.<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div>Finally:<\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<div align=\"justify\">&#8230;Credible or not [coming from a guy who approved the program on the same day he was read into it], Ashcroft pointed to Yoo&#8217;s inaccurate description of these OIA when he explained why he had authorized the program in the past. <\/div>\n<ul>\n<div align=\"justify\"> 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&#8217;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.<\/div>\n<\/ul>\n<p align=\"justify\">So why didn&#8217;t Yoo include these activities in his original opinions? We know that the Administration briefed Congress &#8211; at least partly &#8211; on the data mining aspects of the program; presumably, that&#8217;s why Jello Jay invoked TIA when he <strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/talkingpointsmemo.com\/docs\/rock-cheney1.html\">wrote his letter<\/a><\/strong> to Cheney. Did the Gang of Four get a full briefing on July 17, 2003, on the eve of defunding any data mining?<\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\">Or did Yoo &#8211; and the rest of the Administration &#8211; leave Congress and much of DOJ in the dark about the extent to which they were data mining the communications of American people? <\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div align=\"left\"><font color=\"#300030\"><strong>They specifically broke the Law and hid it from Congress<\/strong><\/font>&#8230;<\/div>\n<div align=\"center\"><font color=\"#300030\"><strong>They specifically broke the Law and hid it from Congress<\/strong><\/font>&#8230;<\/div>\n<div align=\"right\"><font color=\"#300030\"><strong>They specifically broke the Law and hid it from Congress<\/strong><\/font>&#8230;  <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The &ldquo;Other Intelligence Activities&rdquo; By: emptywheel July 15, 2009 I&#8217;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 &quot;Other Intelligence Activities&quot; are [were] &#8211; the ones not included in the &quot;Terrorist Surveillance Program.&quot; Neither Yoo&#8217;s Memos [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3341\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}