-Caveat Lector-
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From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: September 6, 2007 11:36:53 AM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: "One Bomb Away" from Absolute Dictatorship
Glenn Greenwald
Tuesday September 4, 2007 07:25 EST
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/09/04/addington/index.html
Dick Cheney's top aide:
"We're one bomb away" from our goal
In October of 2003, Jack Goldsmith -- a right-wing lawyer with
radical views of executive power and long-time friend of John Yoo
-- was named by the Bush administration to head the DOJ's Office of
Legal Counsel, one of the most influential legal positions in the
executive branch. During his tenure, he discovered numerous legal
positions which the administration had adopted (many created by
Yoo) that he found baseless and even unconscionable -- from torture
to detention powers to illegal surveillance -- and he repudiated
many of them, thereby repeatedly infuriating the most powerful
White House officials, led by Cheney top aide David Addington. As a
result, his tenure was extremely brief, and he was gone a mere 9
months after he began.
Goldsmith, now a Harvard Law Professor, has just written a book, to
be released this month, criticizing and, in some cases, exposing
for the first time, many of Bush's executive power abuses. He is
donating all the proceeds from the book to charity to prevent the
standard integrity attacks which Bush followers launch at any ex-
officials who commit such blasphemy. In a lengthy profile in The
New York Times Magazine, Jeffrey Rosen profiles Goldsmith and
highlights some of the book's key revelations.
Two revelations in particular are extraordinary and deserve (but
are unlikely to receive) intense media coverage. First, it was
Goldsmith who first argued that the administration's secret,
warrantless surveillance programs were illegal, and it was that
conclusion which sparked the now famous refusal of Ashcroft/Comey
in early 2004 to certify the program's legality. Goldsmith argued
continuously about his conclusion with Addington, and during the
course of those arguments, this is what happened:
[Goldsmith] shared the White House's concern that the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act might prevent wiretaps on
international calls involving terrorists. But Goldsmith deplored
the way the White House tried to fix the problem, which was highly
contemptuous of Congress and the courts. "We're one bomb away from
getting rid of that obnoxious [FISA] court," Goldsmith recalls
Addington telling him in February 2004.
Their goal all along was to "get rid of the obnoxious FISA court"
entirely, so that they could freely eavesdrop on whomever they
wanted with no warrants or oversight of any kind. And here is Dick
Cheney's top aide, drooling with anticipation at the prospect of
another terrorist attack so that they could seize this power
without challenge. Addington views the Next Terrorist Attack as the
golden opportunity to seize yet more power. Sitting around the
White House dreaming of all the great new powers they will have
once the new terrorist attack occurs -- as Addington was doing --
is nothing short of deranged.
Contrary to the claims made by Bush and his followers ever since
the NSA scandal arose, their real objective in secretly creating
"The Terrorist Surveillance Program" was never to find a narrow
means to circumvent FISA when, in those few cases, it impeded
necessary eavesdropping. Rather, the goal was to get rid of FISA
altogether and return the country to the days when our government
could spy on us in total secrecy, with no oversight. Of course,
until they could "get rid of" that law altogether -- through the
only tactic they know: exploitation of Terrorism -- they simply
decided to violate it at will.
More revealing still is Goldsmith's description of how the Bush
administration systematically violated one law after the next --
employing tactics that are truly the hallmark of the most lawless
third-world dictators:
In his book, Goldsmith claims that Addington and other top
officials treated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act the
same way they handled other laws they objected to: "They blew
through them in secret based on flimsy legal opinions that they
guarded closely so no one could question the legal basis for the
operations," he writes.
Goldsmith's first experienced this extraordinary concealment, or
"strict compartmentalization," in late 2003 when, he recalls,
Addington angrily denied a request by the N.S.A.'s inspector
general to see a copy of the Office of Legal Counsel's legal
analysis supporting the secret surveillance program. "Before I
arrived in O.L.C., not even N.S.A. lawyers were allowed to see the
Justice Department's legal analysis of what N.S.A. was doing,"
Goldsmith writes.
They literally decided they would break whatever laws they wanted
-- one law after the next, in critical areas -- based on patently
baseless memos issued by obedient followers. Not only did they do
this in complete secrecy from Congress, they refused even to allow
Executive Branch officials who were told to follow orders to see
the legal basis for what they were told to do.
Addington, whom Goldsmith described as "someone who spoke for and
acted with the full backing of the powerful vice president," would
simply demand compliance with what Cheney wanted. And anyone who
objected was subjected to this (emphasis in original):
Months later, when Goldsmith tried to question another presidential
decision, Addington expressed his views even more pointedly. "If
you rule that way," Addington exclaimed in disgust, Goldsmith
recalls, "the blood of the hundred thousand people who die in the
next attack will be on your hands."
While our national media was glorifying the Great Commander-in-
Chief and actively disseminating their most manipulative claims and
mocking Democrats on the pettiest of grounds (The Serious National
Security Grown-ups are in Charge; John Kerry windsurfs! John
Edwards loves his hair!), the Bush administration was dismantling
the rule of law, systematically violating long-standing statutes
and treaties at will. We were ruled by a truly lawless government,
while our media institutions and political elite sat by meek and
respectful.
Perhaps most infuriating is the fact that, as it turns out,
violating these laws in secret was not even necessary -- because
Congress was, and still is, more than happy to legalize whatever
they wanted to do. Almost immediately after the Supreme Court
finally imposed some mild limitations on the President's detention
and interrogation powers -- first in Hamdi, then in Hamdan --
Congress, as Goldsmith says, "promptly passed a law that gave him
everything he asked for, authorizing many aspects of the military
commissions that the Supreme Court had struck down."
And the terrorist bomb about which David Addington was fantasizing
in order to get rid of FISA was equally unnecessary, since the
Democratic Congress, in the face of the types of threats Goldsmith
recounts Addington routinely made -- "the blood of the hundred
thousand people who die in the next attack will be on your hands"
-- just eviscerated the crux of FISA's protections by law. Hence,
what began as the administration's illegal and secret abuses have
become the legally sanctioned policies of the United States.
It is critical to emphasize that Goldsmith -- like James Comey and
John Ashcroft -- is no hero. He is a hard-core right-wing ideologue
who continues to support many of the administration's most radical
positions, including his view that Common Article 3 of the Geneva
Conventions does not apply to terrorist suspects (the position
rejected by Hamdan). And it was Goldsmith who ultimately approved
of the modified (and plainly illegal) NSA warrantless eavesdropping
program.
Moreover, Goldsmith explains that he had not even intended to
address the NSA surveillance program in his book, but changed his
mind once he was served with subpoenas by the FBI in connection
with the ongoing criminal investigation to find out who the
whistleblower was who alerted the country to this illegality -- an
investigation which Goldsmith supports. As Goldsmith says: "I'm not
a civil libertarian, and what I did wasn't driven by concerns about
civil liberties per se."
Goldsmith is commendable only by comparison to the truly extremist
and reprehensible likes of Cheney, Addington, Gonzales and Yoo. He
is, by and large, a True Believer in the Bush "War on Terror" and
in theories designed to expand substantially executive power. That
is what makes his revelations all the more credible, and all the
more disturbing. What he is describing is a band of deranged and
lawless radicals who, during his tenure, ran our government and
who, after they forced him out, continue to do so.
But with little meaningful opposition to any of this -- either in
the media or in the Congress -- little attention will be paid to
these extraordinary revelations, and our government will continue
to be shaped in the image of Dick Cheney and David Addington.
Now that they have obtained most of their original wish list from a
compliant Congress, just imagine what they are dreaming of, new
unchecked powers which they believe are only "one bomb away."
Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL.com.
www.ctrl.org
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