Tag: NSA Warrantless Surveillance

John Yoo defends himself against malpractice allegations in the Inspector General report on warrantless electronic surveillance in an op-ed today's Wall St. Journal, Why We Endorsed Warrantless Wiretaps. He says the IG report " ignores history and plays politics with the law."

Anonymous Liberal breaks it down and says Yoo is not being truthful. (h/t to Peter Daou's tweet.)

The ACLU hits the highlights of the Inspector General's unclassified report (pdf) on the Bush administration's warrantless electronic surveillance program.

• The White House asked the CIA to prepare independent “threat assessments” to determine whether the surveillance program was necessary, but then told the CIA to add a paragraph to the end of each threat assessment stating that terrorists possessed the intent and capability to stage terrorist attacks within the United States (p. 7);

• Many officials, agents and analysts believe that “most PSP (Presidential Surveillance Program) leads were determined not to have any connection to terrorism,” and that “the mere possibility of the leads producing useful information” justified the program (p. 32), directly contradicting previous statements that the program was critical;

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The Washington Post reports on the release of the Unclassified Inspector General report on warrantless wiretapping (and other forms of electronic surveillance). [The unclassified report is here.(pdf)]

Today's report, prepared by five inspectors general from government intelligence agencies, was mandated by Congress in legislation last year that updated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to accommodate new technologies. The bulk of the review remains highly classified.

...The inspectors general from the Departments of Justice and Defense, as well as the CIA, the NSA and the office of the Director of National Intelligence, said they reviewed thousands of documents and interviewed more than 200 people in connection with the report, including Bush era officials John Negroponte, who served as director of national intelligence, National Security Agency Director Michael V. Hayden, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

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Sen. Russ Feingold has written this letter (pdf)to President Obama, calling upon him to renounce the warrantless wiretapping. It begins:

I am writing to reiterate my request for you to formally and promptly renounce the assertions of executive authority made by the Bush Administration with regard to warrantless wiretapping. As a United States Senator, you stated clearly and correctly that the warrantless wiretapping program was illegal. Your Attorney General expressed the same view, both as a private citizen and at his confirmation hearing. It is my hope that you will formally confirm this position as president... [More...]

Michael Isikoff of Newsweek scores a huge exclusive, NSA warrantless wiretap whistleblower Thomas Tamm's story, in his own words.

Exhausted by the uncertainty clouding his life, Tamm now is telling his story publicly for the first time. "I thought this [secret program] was something the other branches of the government—and the public—ought to know about. So they could decide: do they want this massive spying program to be taking place?" Tamm told NEWSWEEK, in one of a series of recent interviews that he granted against the advice of his lawyers. "If somebody were to say, who am I to do that? I would say, 'I had taken an oath to uphold the Constitution.' It's stunning that somebody higher up the chain of command didn't speak up."

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The good news is that Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine announced he will conduct an investigation into how the Justice Department used the information it received from Bush's warrantless, NSA electronic surveillance program. He has also mangaged to get security clearances for his investigators. The bad news is it "won't address whether the controversial program is an unconstitutional expansion of presidential power, as its critics and a federal judge in Detroit have charged."

The ACLU reports:

In a letter to the House Judiciary Committee, Glenn Fine, the Justice Department’s Inspector General, said that his office has "decided to open a program review that will examine the Department’s controls and use of information related to the program and the Department’s compliance with legal requirements governing the program."

Again, it's not enough. It won't address the legality of the program. As the ACLU points out: