Category Archives: Bush’s Watergate On Steroids

Warrantless Wiretapping of American Citizens A-OK According to Obama’s DOJ

In the past, I have placed all of my “warrantless wiretapping of americans” posts under

Bush’s Watergate on Steroids.
What a joke! Ha ha! But the joke’s on me – and all of us, as it turns out.
It saddens me greatly to have to create an “Obama’s Warrantless Wiretapping” category.
Today is a day I never thought I’d see. Seriously. I thought something as simple as striking down warrantless wiretapping would be a no-brainer. Certainly not a policy the Obama Administration would actually endorse and defend.
This is an excerpt from EFF’s Effector 22.10:

THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION HAS EMBRACED BUSH’S POSITION ON WARANTLESS WIRETAPPING, and goes one step further than the previous administration. In a motion to dismiss Jewel v. NSA, the Obama Administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) made two deeply troubling arguments.
First, they argued, exactly as the Bush Administration did on countless occasions, that the state secrets privilege requires the court to dismiss the issue out of hand. They asserted that simply allowing the case to continue “would cause exceptionally grave harm to national security.” As in the past, this is a blatant ploy to dismiss the litigation without allowing the courts to consider the evidence.
Second, the DOJ claimed that the U.S. Government is completely immune from litigation for illegal spying because the USA PATRIOT Act renders the U.S. immune from suit under the two remaining key federal surveillance laws: the Wiretap Act and the Stored Communications Act. This is a radical assertion that is utterly unprecedented. No one — not the White House, not the Justice Department, not any member of Congress, and not the Bush Administration — has ever interpreted the law this way.
This isn’t change we can believe in. This is change for the worse.
For the full blog post:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/04/obama-doj-worse-than-bush
For the press release:
http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2009/04/05
For Kevin Bankston on “Countdown With Keith Olbermann”:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/04/bankston-on-olbermann
For Keith Olbermann on Obama and Wiretapping:
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2009/04/keith-olbermann-obama-and-wiretapping

***end excerpt***
This is pretty upsetting. I’m still shocked and dismayed.
I wanted to make sure you knew at least. Somehow that makes me feel a little better, usually.

Video of Appellate Arguments in AT&T/US Government Domestic Spying Case

I finally finished making clips of the arguments in front of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals last week in the AT& T/US Government Domestic Spying Case.
I’ll be blogging about this in more detail, but for now, everything’s here:

http://video.lisarein.com/eff/byshow/cspan/08-15-07/
I’ve split them up into folders:
– US Gov (att-gov)
– AT & T (att-kellogg)
– Frap (frap) (representing AT&T consumers — and really the American public at large, in this case.)
The Judges were asking good questions and looking out for our best interests. It seems like they weren’t buying the U.S. Government’s argument that merely discussing the possibility of a relationship (or even the non-existence of one) between AT&T and the Government constitutes a “state secret.”
More on this over the next few days! I just wanted to get this up there so others could use it/learn from it.
It’s great stuff!

Matt Cooper Outs Rove On Meet The Press…And Nobody Cares?

So I’m so busy trying to not pay attention to Karl Rove on Meet The Press yesterday morning, that I don’t bother to watch the rest of the show…
Where as, luck, or in this case, NBC, would have it, Matt Cooper apparently let the cat out o’ the bag about Rove leaking Valerie Plame’s identity. All casual and shit.
Then Gregory moves on to another topic…like nothing important was even said.
I wouldn’t have even have known to go back and look at my recording if my trusty t r u t h o u t newsletter hadn’t have informed me.

Gregory: Matt Cooper, let’s pick up on an aspect of the interview with, with Karl Rove having to do with the leak case, the CIA leak case, that you were part of as well. And something that’s very interesting, he, he went out of his way to say, “I would not have been a confirming source on this kind of information” and taking issue with, with Novak’s testimony in his column that he knew who Valerie Plame was. He said he would never confirm that information. That’s different from your experience with him.
Cooper: Yeah, I, I think he was dissembling, to put it charitably. Look, Karl Rove told me about Valerie Plame’s identity on July 11th, 2003. I called him because Ambassador Wilson was in the news that week. I didn’t know Ambassador Wilson even had a wife until I talked to Karl Rove and he said that she worked at the agency and she worked on WMD. I mean, to imply that he didn’t know about it or that this was all a leak by someone else…
Gregory: Or that he had heard it from somebody else…
Cooper: or that he heard it as some rumor out in the hallway is, is nonsense.
Gregory: But he makes no apologies to Valerie Plame.
Cooper: Karl Rove never apologizes. That’s not what he does.
Then Gregory just changes the subject…”Back to politics…”
I thought they were talking about politics…

Three Judge Panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Says Domestic Spying OK till further notice

Court temporarily OKs domestic spying
By Dan Sewell, Associated Press

The Bush administration can continue its warrantless surveillance program while it appeals a judge’s ruling that the program is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday…
The unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave little explanation for the decision. In the three-paragraph ruling, judges said that they balanced the likelihood an appeal would succeed, the potential damage to both sides and the public interest…
The ACLU contends that the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which set up the secret court to grant warrants for such surveillance, gave the government enough tools to monitor suspected terrorists.
“We are confident that when the 6th Circuit addresses the merits of this case, it will agree that warrantless wiretapping of Americans violates the law and is unconstitutional,” Melissa Goodman, an ACLU attorney, said in a news release.
Similar lawsuits challenging the program have been filed by other groups, including in New York and San Francisco. The issue could wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Continue reading →

Scooter Names Karl Rove and Ari Fleischer In Plame Scandal

This is from the April 13, 2006 program.
Libby’s latest court filings name Karl Rove and Ari Fleischer as people who were also involved in leaking the information about Valerie Plame to the press. In Ari Fleischer’s grand jury testimony, he describes a day when Scooter Libby took him to lunch, which had never happened before, and Scooter told him that Joseph Wilson’s wife was a CIA agent, and that it was not widely known. (wink wink) Ari said that he took that to mean that he should leak it to the press. But the important part here is, of course, that Scooter has named Karl Rove as being involved in the conspiracy.

Video – Rove Implicated by Libby (Quicktime 17 MB)

Audio – Rove Implicated by Libby (MP3 9 MB)

Joseph Wilson On Keith Olbermann

This is from the April 10, 2006 program of
Countdown with Keith Olbermann.
As always, Keith Olbermann is the only guy in the news media thoroughly covering this story.
Joseph Wilson clarifies the details and emphasizes seriousness of the situation.

In a nutshell, President Bush, Cheney and Karl Rove are traitors. Together, they conspired to out Valerie Plame as a CIA agent in retaliation for her husband’s going to the media about how Saddam hadn’t really purchased uranium from Niger, and therefore, how Iraq’s WMDs didn’t exist.

Video – Joe Wilson on Olbermann – All (37 MB)

Video – Joe Wilson on Olbermann – Intro (9 MB)

Video – Joe Wilson on Olbermann – Wilson Interview (13 MB)

Video – Joe Wilson on Olbermann – Shuster Analysis (10 MB)

Audio – Joe Wilson on Olbermann – All (18 MB)

Audio – Joe Wilson on Olbermann – Intro (5 MB)

Audio – Joe Wilson on Olbermann – Wilson Interview (9 MB)

Audio – Joe Wilson on Olbermann – Shuster Analysis (6 MB)

Joseph Wilson On 60 Minutes – How Valerie Plame Leak Threatens Our National Security

This is from the October 30, 2005 program of 60 minutes
I’ve been clearing off my TIVO since I’ve been home so much lately, and what do I run across but a 60 Minutes piece from October 30, 2005 about Valerie Plame. Not about the scandal per se, but about Valerie: who she was, what she did, and the lives potentially at risk and irrepairable damage that has been done to our National Security as a result of her identity being revealed.

Valerie was an undercover Agent gathering intelligence about numerous countries’ Nuclear Weapons programs. She dedicated her life to protecting the National Security of the United States. She recommended her husband, Joseph Wilson, to go on another patriotic mission to Nigeria to verify whether or not Saddam Hussein had purchased uranium from there. Wilson went on this mission, almost as a favor, for the Vice President himself. When Wilson came back with the truth – that the documents saying Saddam had purchased uranium were forged, the Vice President wanted Wilson to keep quiet about it.

When he did not, and instead offered up to the press what he had uncovered, our Bush, Cheney and Rove conspired to reveal his wife’s identity in retaliation.
Wow. You’ve really got to see this for yourself.

Video – 60 Minutes On The CIA Leak – All

Video – 60 Minutes On The CIA Leak – Part One

Video – 60 Minutes On The CIA Leak – Part Two

Audio – 60 Minutes On The CIA Leak – All

Audio – 60 Minutes On The CIA Leak – Part One

Audio – 60 Minutes On The CIA Leak – Part Two

Keith Olbermann On Scooter Getting His Go Ahead To Leak The Identity of CIA Agent Valerie Plame Straight From Bush and Cheney

I’m late for lunch and swamped finishing my masters (three more days!)….
But I just finished uploading Keith Olbermann’s report on this situation from last Thursday, April 6, 2006, so I wanted to at least make it available to you raw style until I can blog it properly later.
The file is available as “all three parts together” and in three parts here w/pics.

1- Olbermann’s overview

2-Shuster’s take on it

3- John Dean’s take on it.

The Washington Post Chimes In On the Bush – Plame Link

This is from Sunday, April 9, 2006:

A “Concerted Effort” to Discredit Bush Critic
Prosecutor describes Cheney, Libby as key voices pitching Iraq-Niger story.
By Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer for The Washington Post

As he drew back the curtain this week on the evidence against Vice President Cheney’s former top aide, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald for the first time described a “concerted action” by “multiple people in the White House” – using classified information – to “discredit, punish or seek revenge against” a critic of President Bush’s war in Iraq.
Bluntly and repeatedly, Fitzgerald placed Cheney at the center of that campaign. Citing grand jury testimony from the vice president’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Fitzgerald fingered Cheney as the first to voice a line of attack that at least three White House officials would soon deploy against former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.
Cheney, in a conversation with Libby in early July 2003, was said to describe Wilson’s CIA-sponsored trip to Niger the previous year – in which the envoy found no support for charges that Iraq tried to buy uranium there – as “a junket set up by Mr. Wilson’s wife,” CIA case officer Valerie Plame.
Libby is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice for denying under oath that he disclosed Plame’s CIA employment to journalists. There is no public evidence to suggest Libby made any such disclosure with Cheney’s knowledge. But according to Libby’s grand jury testimony, described for the first time in legal papers filed this week, Cheney “specifically directed” Libby in late June or early July 2003 to pass information to reporters from two classified CIA documents: an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate and a March 2002 summary of Wilson’s visit to Niger.
One striking feature of that decision

Well you can’t get any higher up the chain than that: Both Bush and Cheney We’re Behind Leak

From the “Hey is anybody listening? The information we’ve been waiting for years to break has broken” department, Jason Leopold and like five other reporters are covering what has got to be the most exciting development in this dismal administration: not only did Cheney tell Libby to leak the information to the press about Joseph Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, being a CIA agent, but , according to Libby himself, Bush told Cheney to tell him to do it.
I have some nice clips from Keith Olbermann going up next, but this story published this morning in the Times sums it up nicely too.

Bush and Cheney Discussed Plame Prior to Leak
by Jason Leopold for t r u t h o u t.

In early June 2003, Vice President Dick Cheney met with President Bush and told him that CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson was the wife of Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson and that she was responsible for sending him on a fact-finding mission to Niger to check out reports about Iraq’s attempt to purchase uranium from the African country, according to current and former White House officials and attorneys close to the investigation to determine who revealed Plame-Wilson’s undercover status to the media.
Other White House officials who also attended the meeting with Cheney and President Bush included former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, her former deputy Stephen Hadley, and Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove.
This information was provided to this reporter by attorneys and US officials who have remained close to the case. Investigators working with Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald compiled the information after interviewing 36 Bush administration officials over the past two and a half years.
The revelation puts a new wrinkle into Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s two-year-old criminal probe into the leak and suggests for the first time that President Bush knew from early on that the vice president and senior officials on his staff were involved in a coordinated effort to attack Wilson’s credibility by leaking his wife’s classified CIA status.
Now that President Bush’s knowledge of the Plame Wilson affair has been exposed, there are thorny questions about whether the president has broken the law – specifically, whether he obstructed justice when he was interviewed about his knowledge of the Plame Wilson leak and the campaign to discredit her husband.
Details of President Bush’s involvement in the Plame Wilson affair came in a 39-page court document filed by Fitzgerald late Wednesday evening in US District Court in Washington.
Fitzgerald’s court filing was made in response to attorneys representing I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, who was indicted on five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice, and lying to investigators for not telling grand jury he spoke to reporters about Plame Wilson.
Libby’s attorneys have in the past months have argued that the government has evidence that would prove Libby’s innocence and that the special prosecutor refuses to turn it over to the defense. Fitzgerald said in court documents he has already turned over thousands of pages of evidence to Libby’s attorneys and that further discovery requests have been overly broad.