Goldsmith - The Terror Presidency (0.00 / 0)

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The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration

Goldsmith is a conservative lawyer who understands the imperative of averting another 9/11. But his unflinching insistence that we abide by the law put him on a collision course with powerful figures in the administration. Goldsmith's fascinating analysis of parallel legal crises in the Lincoln and Roosevelt administrations shows why Bush's apparent indifference to human rights has damaged his presidency and, perhaps, his standing in history.

Jack L. Goldsmith is the Henry L. Shattuck Professor of Law at Harvard University. From October 2003 to June 2004 he was assistant attorney general, Office of Legal Counsel.

"Challenging the status quo"

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by: Oui @ Sun Jul 29, 2007 at 16:48:50 PM CDT

TIA and Information Awareness Office (0.00 / 0)

Provocative stuff, bringing up TIA; but you make no mention of it having been officially terminated, the Information Awareness Office closed, only to have its funding move into a classified budget and the program itself moved out of sight.  Have you done all your homework?

Whereof nothing can be said Thereof we must remain silent. L Wittgenstein

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by: pzykr @ Sun Jul 29, 2007 at 23:21:15 PM CDT

You are right (0.00 / 0)

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I could have been more explicit, see link above:

"Despite the withdraw of funding for the TIA and the closing of the IAO, the core of the project survived. Legislators included a classified annex to the Defense Appropriations Act that preserved funding for TIA's component technologies, if they were transferred to other government agencies. TIA projects continued to be funded under classified annexes to Defense and Intelligence appropriation bills."

As further funding went into classified Defense and Intelligence programs, these were lost for full congressional oversight. I believe that is the discrepancy in the Gonzales statements at the hearings.

"Challenging the status quo"

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by: Oui @ Mon Jul 30, 2007 at 00:08:24 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Cheney - The Imperial Presidency (0.00 / 0)

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"Some of his ideas are from another century."
 Bob Woodward

VP Cheney: "I don't recall"
Larry King - July 31, 2007

KING: In that regard, "The New York Times," which is -- as you said, it's not your favorite paper, reports it was you who dispatched Gonzales and Andy Card to then Attorney General John Ashcroft's hospital in 2004 to push Ashcroft to certify the president's intelligence gathering program.

Was it you?

CHENEY: I don't recall the -- first of all, I haven't seen the story. I don't recall that I gave instructions to that effect.

KING: That would be something you would recall.

CHENEY: I would think so. But, certainly, I was involved because I was a big advocate of the Terrorist Surveillance Program and had been responsible and been working with General Hayden and George Tenet to get it to the president for approval.

By the time this occurred, it had already been approved about 12 times by the Department of Justice. There was nothing sort of new about.

KING: But you didn't send them to get Ash...

CHENEY: I don't recall that I was the one who sent them to the hospital.

NSA Spying Part of Broader Effort
Intelligence Chief Says Bush Authorized Secret Activities Under One Order

The Bush administration's chief intelligence official said yesterday that President Bush authorized a series of secret surveillance activities under a single executive order in late 2001. The disclosure makes clear that a controversial National Security Agency program was part of a much broader operation than the president previously described.

The disclosure by Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, appears to be the first time that the administration has publicly acknowledged that Bush's order included undisclosed activities beyond the warrantless surveillance of e-mails and phone calls that Bush confirmed in December 2005.

In a letter to Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), McConnell wrote that the executive order following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks included "a number of ... intelligence activities" and that a name routinely used by the administration -- the Terrorist Surveillance Program -- applied only to "one particular aspect of these activities, and nothing more."

"This is the only aspect of the NSA activities that can be discussed publicly, because it is the only aspect of those various activities whose existence has been officially acknowledged," McConnell said.

Data Mining Figured In Dispute Over NSA
Report Links Program to Gonzales Uproar

? Analysis in StevenD's diary - Spies in Your Kitchen Sink? ?

"Challenging the status quo"

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by: Oui @ Wed Aug 01, 2007 at 12:57:29 PM CDT