Slashdot Mirror
DOJ Report On NSA Wiretaps Finally Released
oliphaunt writes "As regular readers will recall, after the 2004 elections the New York Times revealed that the NSA had been conducting illegal wiretaps of American citizens since early 2001. Over the course of the next four years, more information about the illegal program trickled out, leading to several lawsuits against the government and various officials involved in its implementation. This week several of these matters are coming to a head: Yesterday, the lawyers for the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation filed a motion for summary judgment in their lawsuit against the Obama DOJ. The motion begins by quoting a statement made by Candidate Obama in 2007, acknowledging that the warrantless wiretap program was illegal. US District Judge Vaughn Walker has given indications that he is increasingly skeptical of the government's arguments in this case. In what might just be a coincidence of timing, today the long-awaited report from the DOJ inspector general to the US Congress about the wiretapping program was declassified and released. Emptywheel has the beginnings of a working thread going here."
The Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation.....based in Saudi Arabia, tied to Al-Qaeda and banned by the United Nations Security Council Committee 1267.
http://www.un.org/sc/committees/1267/
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
There's no way on earth a judge is going to hold that a statement made on a campaign is anything binding. If he were to, Obama would be utterly buried in lawsuits, as would every other president.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
It's worse than that. Bish got rid of Habeas Corpus after 800 years. Obama now reserves the Executive Privilege to detain indefinitely, those acquitted and exonerated!
Obama claims right to imprison "combatants" acquitted at trial
By Bill Van Auken
10 July 2009
In testimony before the US Senate Tuesday, legal representatives of the Obama administration not only defended the system of kangaroo military tribunals set up under Bush, but affirmed the government's right to continue imprisoning detainees indefinitely, even if they are tried and acquitted on allegations of terror-related crimes.
This assertion of sweeping, extra-constitutional powers is only the latest in a long series of decisions by the Democratic administration demonstrating its essential continuity with the Bush White House on questions of militarism and attacks on democratic rights.
The testimony, given to the Senate Armed Services Committee by the top lawyer for the Pentagon and the head of the Justice Department's National Security Division, came in the context of a congressional bid to reconfigure the military tribunal system set up under the Bush administration.
In 2006, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act in an attempt to lend legal cover to the system of drumhead courts set up to try so-called "enemy combatants," which had been found unconstitutional by the US Supreme Court. The high court subsequently ruled against the congressionally revised system as well.
This latest effort, like the one carried out three years ago, is aimed at fending off successful court challenges to the system. The Senate Armed Services Committee introduced new military commission legislation last month as part of the 2010 military spending bill.
As the committee's Democratic chairman, Carl Levin of Michigan, put it, the aim was to "substitute new procedures and language" that would "restore confidence in military commissions."
As the administration's lawyers made clear, however, any changes will amount to mere window dressing in an Orwellian system where the government decides who is entitled to trial, whether defendants are brought before military or civilian courts, and even whether or not to free those who are found not guilty.
The Justice Department attorney, David Kris, told the Senate panel that civilian and military prosecutors are still debating whether scores of detainees who have been marked for trial will be brought before a military tribunal or a civilian court.
"This is a fact-intensive judgment that requires a careful assessment of all the evidence," Kris said. He acknowledged that some form of trial was preferable to simply continuing to hold the detainees as "unlawful combatants."
What is clear, however, is that this "fact intensive" process is aimed at determining which detainees can be convicted in a civilian court, which of them must be sent to military tribunals because of the weakness of the evidence against them, and which will simply be held without trial because there is no evidence that would stand up in either venue. In such a system, all must be found guilty--the only question is by what means.
Undoubtedly another major concern is keeping out of open court cases which could make public the heinous crimes carried out by the US military and intelligence apparatus in the "war on terror," including acts of "extraordinary rendition," torture and murder.
The Obama White House has repeatedly demonstrated its determination to cover up these crimes, including by defying a court order to release Pentagon torture photos and the Justice Department's attempts to quash legal challenges to the criminal practices of the Bush administration, including rendition, torture and illegal domestic spying.
Appearing with Kris was Jeh Johnson, the chief lawyer of the Defense Department, who made the case for the president's supposed power to continue holding detainees without bringing them before any court and to throw men acqui
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Um.. Not 800 years. Lincoln got rid of it for a lot more people just 140 years ago. Almost the entire south was without it at one point in time.