Completely Unnecessary

Please read the post below this first.

Glenn Greenwald has another characteristically thorough analysis of the Comey testimony. The whole article is worth reading, but I think he puts what I was trying to say in the last post compellingly.

But more revealingly, just consider what it says about this administration. Not only did Comey think that he had to rush to the hospital room to protect Ashcroft from having a conniving Card and Gonzales manipulate his severe illness and confusion by coercing his signature on a document… but the administration’s own FBI Director thought it was necessary to instruct his FBI agents not to allow Comey to be removed from the room.

Comey and Mueller were clearly both operating on the premise that Card and Gonzales were basically thugs. Indeed, Comey said that when Card ordred him to the White House, Comey refused to meet with Card without a witness being present, and that Card refused to allow Comey’s summoned witness (Solicitor General Ted Olson) even to enter Card’s office. These are the most trusted intimates of the White House — the ones who are politically sympathetic to them and know them best — and they prepared for, defended themselves against, the most extreme acts of corruption and thuggery from the President’s Chief of Staff and his then-legal counsel (and current Attorney General of the United States).

Does this sound in any way like the behavior of a government operating under the rule of law, which believes that it had legal authority to spy on Americans without the warrants required for three decades by law? How can we possibly permit our government to engage in this behavior, to spy on us in deliberate violation of the laws which we enacted democratically precisely in order to limit how they can spy on us, and to literally commit felonies at will, knowing that they are breaking the law?

How is this not a major scandal on the level of the greatest presidential corruption and lawbreaking scandals in our country’s history? Why is this only a one-day story that will focus on the hospital drama but not on what it reveals about the bulging and unparalleled corruption of this administration and the complete erosion of the rule of law in our country? And, as I’ve asked many times before, if we passively allow the President to simply break the law with impunity in how the government spies on our conversations, what don’t we allow?

If we had a functioning political press, these are the questions that would be dominating our political discourse and which would have been resolved long ago.

Greenwald is correct to point out that the spectacle of the incident is serving the dual purpose of both highlighting and concealing the machinations of the administration. If the press focuses only on the drama of the race to save Ashcroft and not the larger issues of what this says about the administration and the legality of the NSA program, this is just going going to be one more example of the failings of our fourth estate.

While we’re at it, Glennwald makes some good points about the last part of Comey’s statement, which I didn’t include only because I thought my post was getting too long. But as that ship has obviously sailed…

Comey testifed that he and Muller each met separately with the president and informed him of the mass resignations that would follow. Comey also indicates that they must have discussed the program because at the end of the two meetings, the president relents and Comey agrees to stay on. Greenwald writes:

But Law Professor Orin Kerr… suggests that there were changes to the program itself — i.e. changes in the operational rules of the NSA’s eavesdropping — not merely changes to the DOJ legal theories (emphasis added [by Greenwald]):

It sounds like the President personally either gave in or reached a compromise with Comey (it’s not clear to me which) that refashioned the program in a way that DOJ was willing to approve.

The only real possibility for how the program could be “refashioned” in order to convince the DOJ of its legality would be tighten the nexus between the warrantless eavesdropping and the AUMF….

But if that’s the case — if it was only in 2004 that a requirement was created that the eavesdropping be tied closely to terrorists encompassed by the AUMF — then that would mean that prior to that time, there was no nexus between the eavesdropping and those terrorist groups. It would mean that prior to this 2004 DOJ rebellion, the scope of the NSA eavesdropping — the list of those who were subject to warrantless eavesdropping — was far broader than the Islamic terrorist groups against whom the President was authorized by the AUMF to use military force.

That would necessarily mean that — contrary to what the administration has repeatedly insisted was true — it was not merely Al Qaeda and similar groups who were the targets of the eavesdropping conducted in secret, but targets beyond that category. Obviously, this is speculation, though I would suggest for the reasons indicated that it is approaching the realm of logically necessary speculation. What other changes besides tying the eavesdropping to Al Qaeda-type groups could have been made that would have enabled Ashcroft, Comey & Co. to conclude that there was a plausible legal basis for warrantless eavesdropping?

Translation: Ashcroft and Comey, et al may have protested the NSA program because for two and a half years it included wiretaps on people not connected to Al Qaeda.

As I understand it (and I’m not exactly a legal scholar), this means that the administration ran with the program for 2.5 years, then tightened its focus down to coalesce with their argument that Congress granted Bush powers to fight Al Qaeda after Ashcroft and Comey (and apparently most of DOJ) refused to sign off on it anymore. (Comey came on in late 2003, so we have to speculate that he was one of the driving forces behind DOJ’s new-found stubbornness). Meaning that before that time, the wiretaps not only didn’t apply under the AUMF, but they also expanded beyond Al Qaeda. And this means the administration should have been going to the FISA court to get approval for the wiretaps. If they didn’t, wiretapping of Americans would have been illegal.

If any of this speculation is true - hell, if only part of it is true - the Bush administration seriously violated the law by wiretapping Americans without warrants and without connections to Al Qaeda. It would also mean that they have lied about repeatedly and for a number of years.

Greenwald’s best point may how much Card and Gonzales’ actions with Ashcroft simply cannot reflect an administration who thought what they were doing was on the up and up. You don’t go at night to a man’s hospital room when he’s in intensive care (and not even the acting AG) to get him to sign a document for a program you believe to be legal. If nothing else, the reaction of Comey and (especially) Muller really reflect how scared they were not only of the administration officials, but of the program itself.

Special. Counsel. Now.

Greenwald link again - it’s a long way to scroll up.

Sphere: Related Content

Vaguely Related

• No related posts.