Let's keep watch here on some of the spying eyes

RogerChristie

What part of this activity is done by a 'free government'?

Z-e-r-o.

:-O

February 2, 2006
Senate Panel Rebuffed on Documents on U.S. Spying

By ERIC LICHTBLAU
WASHINGTON, Feb. 1 — The Bush administration is rebuffing requests from members of the Senate Judiciary Committee for its classified legal opinions on President Bush's domestic spying program, setting up a confrontation in advance of a hearing scheduled for next week, administration and Congressional officials said Wednesday.

The Justice Department is balking at the request so far, administration officials said, arguing that the legal opinions would add little to the public debate because the administration has already laid out its legal defense at length in several public settings.

But the legality of the program is known to have produced serious concerns within the Justice Department in 2004, at a time when one of the legal opinions was drafted. Democrats say they want to review the internal opinions to assess how legal thinking on the program evolved and whether lawyers in the department saw any concrete limits to the president's powers in fighting terrorism.

With the committee scheduled to hold the first public hearing on the eavesdropping program on Monday, the Justice Department's stance could provoke another clash between Congress and the executive branch over access to classified internal documents. The administration has already drawn fire from Democrats in the last week for refusing to release internal documents on Hurricane Katrina as well as material related to the lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

Several Democrats and at least one Republican have pressed the Justice Department in recent days to give them access, even in a closed setting, to the internal documents that formed the legal foundation of the surveillance program. But when asked whether the classified legal opinions would be made available to Congress, a senior Justice Department official said Wednesday, "I don't think they're coming out."

The official said the administration's legal arguments had already been aired, most prominently in a 42-page "white paper" issued last month. "Everything that's in those memos was in the white paper," said the official, who, like other administration and Congressional officials, was granted anonymity because classified material was involved.

While the administration has spent much of the last two weeks defending the legality and necessity of the surveillance program, the Judiciary Committee session will be the first Congressional hearing on it. Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who leads the panel, said Wednesday that he had "a lot of questions" the administration had not yet adequately answered about the program's legal rationale.

Mr. Specter would not address the committee's request for the classified legal opinions, except to say, "that's not a closed matter — we're still working on that."

Several Democrats on the panel have made formal requests for the legal opinions, including Senator Dianne Feinstein of California.

In the interview, Mr. Specter said that he wanted a fuller explanation as to how the Justice Department asserts that the eavesdropping operation does not conflict with the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which set strict and "exclusive" guidelines for intelligence wiretaps.

The operation was approved by President Bush, to allow the National Security Agency to conduct wiretaps on Americans' international communications without a court warrant. Mr. Specter said his view was that the operation "violates FISA — there's no doubt about that."

He also questioned why the administration did not go to Congress or the intelligence court to seek changes in the process before moving ahead on its own with the classified program after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Representative Jane Harman, the California Democrat who was one of the few members of the Congress briefed on the operation, echoed that same theme in a letter sent Wednesday to President Bush.

She said in the letter that with changes made to the foreign intelligence law after the Sept. 11 attacks, the eavesdropping operations of the N.S.A. "can and should" be covered by court-approved warrants, "without circumventing" the process.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales will be the lone witness at next week's hearing, and his aides said he was entering it with confidence about the program's legal footing, based on both the president's inherent constitutional authority and a Congressional authorization after the Sept. 11 attacks to use military force against terrorists. But both Republicans and Democrats said Wednesday that they planned to question Mr. Gonzales about those assertions.

While the administration has laid out its legal defense repeatedly in the last two weeks, the formal legal opinions developed at the Justice Department to justify the program remain classified. The administration has refused even to publicly acknowledge the existence of the memorandums, but The New York Times has reported that two sets of legal opinions by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel asserted the president's broad power to order wiretaps without warrants in protecting national security.

The first Justice Department opinion is thought to have been written in late 2001 or early 2002 by John Yoo, a strong proponent of expanded presidential powers in wartime. The second opinion, officials said, was drafted by Jack Goldsmith, another senior department official who later left to teach at Harvard. It came in 2004 at a time some senior officials at the Justice Department were voicing concerns about the program's legal foundation and refusing to sign off on its reauthorization.

Those concerns led in part to the suspension of the surveillance program for several months and also appear to have led Mr. Goldsmith and other Justice Department lawyers to revisit the question of its legal underpinnings in order to satisfy those concerns.

Members of the Judiciary Committee have sought access to the memorandums, officials said. Some Democrats speculate that the classified memos may contain far-reaching and potentially explosive legal theories similar to those advocated by Mr. Yoo and others, and later disavowed by the Justice Department, regarding policies on torture.

In a letter sent Wednesday to Mr. Gonzales, Mrs. Feinstein said the legal opinions and other internal documents were needed for Congress to assess whether the president "has the inherent authority to authorize this surveillance."

With two additional hearings scheduled on the program after Mr. Gonzales's appearance, Mr. Specter said he was also considering seeking testimony from former Justice Department officials, and perhaps even input from the FISA court itself.

But Senator Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat who also serves on the Judiciary Committee, said the panel should consider issuing subpoenas if the administration is not more forthcoming in providing documents and witnesses.

"Without the Justice Department memos and without more witnesses, it's hard to se how anything other than a rehashing of the administration line is going to happen," Mr. Schumer said Wednesday. "I am worried that these hearings could end up telling us very little when the American people are thirsty to find out what happened here."

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Johnny J · Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 2:08 am Post subject:

Spying without warrants is a defining characteristic of a police state. Warrants are a product of centuries of legal precedent, and now they're gone in a flash.

Fellow Americans: search your soul and ask -- has America become a police state before anyone realized what happened?

Johnny J

**aeroplane** · Posted: Fri Feb 03, 2006 9:40 pm Post subject:

indicaspice · Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2006 2:11 am Post subject:

Johnny J · Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2006 2:41 am Post subject:

The Wisco Sha'man · Shaman Joined: 30 Jan 2006 Posts: 39

Do you think the government has found a way to make money by taking liberty from people?

Just fo the sake of debate?

**Ferre** · Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2006 10:30 am Post subject:

Johnny J · Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2006 6:25 pm Post subject:

**Ferre** · Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2006 6:34 pm Post subject:

A little reminder for those who missed this news when it came out in 2004(Mainstream press was VERY silent on this btw)

Ex-KGB and STASI Chiefs To Work Under Chertoff - KGB and STASI reinforce Homeland Security
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**Mystic Power** · Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2006 6:41 pm Post subject:

I always remind myself NOT to look for cosmetic similarities with past totalitarian regimes.

American fascism will always smell like bubblegum and taste like a cheeseburger.

It's Archie and Jugghead in jackboots. And it's real.

Follow Your Bliss,
Ben
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**aeroplane** · Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2006 6:56 pm Post subject:

Let's not forget who the vast majority of politicians work for: BIG businesses. Many have sat the boards or worked as advisors, and all own stock (more that the average Joe). Even the politicians that came from "humble beginnings" did so by working the corporate system.

Corporate america runs and "owns" both the legislative and executive branches of the government which used to boast, "for the people and by the people".

The majority of american prisons are privately owned. They convinced the public to take authority of the prisons from the "corrupt" government, and give control to "honest" private contractors.

Prisons are now treated as businesses. It's all about cost efficiency based on human suffering. The most effeciant way to run a prison business is to keep a large population. Of course, it's the taxpayers money going pretty much unaudited into the pockets of the prison owners and for what? After the terms are up, the criminal has not been helped in any way. He or she has probably become more desperate and educated in crime.

This has a ripple effect. Children growing up in the desperate neighborhoods that fill most of these prisons usually have little hope for the future. Many join the military while still in highschool hoping to clear the prison/poverty hurtle. The big G and big B both benefit from having a large military that can do their dirty work.

So, in my opinion, yes prisons and governements do work together to make money off of crime.
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**Mystic Power** · Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2006 7:26 pm Post subject:

I also suspect that's why the Democrats are putting up such little resistance. It's not because they're lame.

It's because they're doing exactly what they're paid to do: Look lame.

Only 5 or 6 corporations own 80% of the media, and they perpetuate the myth of the liberal media. There ain't no liberal media.

A simple phone call to their lapdog news editors: "We don't feel you should focus on that story. We think you should go with the story about the missing cute blonde girl in Aruba. Really. We do. Go with that."

Ben
_________________
"We are the Ones we have been waiting for."
~Hopi Elder ~

"In Lak'ech"
~ Ancient Mayan: "I am another YOU." ~

**Torkel** · Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2006 11:55 pm Post subject:

**Ferre** · Posted: Sun Feb 05, 2006 3:15 am Post subject:

In a pointed exchange, Senator Russell D. Feingold, Democrat of Wisconsin, asked Mr. Negroponte whether there were any other "intelligence collection" programs that had not been revealed to the full Intelligence Committees.

Mr. Negroponte replied, "Senator, I don't know if I can comment on that in open session."

In other words, yes, we do have more secret spying operations on civillians but don't want to talk about it, it's secret you see.
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RogerChristie

Hello friends and guests,

Aloha. Thanks, Ferre, for finding that John Negroponte quote. I presume that most information is known by 'Big Brother' and that there is precious little personal privacy left.

Big Brother is almost like 'spirit' to me, a really B-I-G brain knows everything that's 'out there' - and it's got my 'number' ... and 'it' possibly has yours, too. :-O

"God, that's GREAT! Please show me the blessings in this situation ... and hurry!"

When I was a small kid it was recommended to me that I act in such a way that I would be comfortable if everything I did was printed on the front page of the New York Times the next day. As I look back that was really good advice and I would pass it along to anyone who might be interested in a simple life lesson in integrity. Especially now that virtually every keystroke on every computer IS 'known' by a bigger computer, and every telephone call is monitored by those similar computers, etc.

My point is that the THC Ministry was designed to be a place of safety for sincere, spiritual enjoyers of Cannabis. Like facing a powerful wave coming towards me in the ocean, the safest thing I know to do is to take a deep breath, dive straight into it and come up the other side! It works every time and has kept me safe in the biggest of waves. Every other method has knocked me on my ass and churned me around like I was in a huge washing machine.

More violations of Big Brother coming? I expect it and act accordingly. The stronger I build my 'legitimacy' as a minister the safer I feel in my Cannabis world. I trust that the same is true for you.

Sincerely,

Roger

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