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The Washington Times
www.washtimes.com
In the name of justice
James Bovard
Published 10/9/00
H.L. Mencken quipped in the 1920s that the name "Justice Department" was an
oxymoron. Attorney General Janet Reno has vindicated Mencken and given solace
to cynics across the land.
In July, controversy erupted over "Carnivore," the FBI's e-mail wiretap
software that reportedly can vacuum up vast amounts of private e-mail —
regardless of whether the feds have a search warrant. FBI officials "explained"
the program's ominous name by stressing that they never thought the public
would learn of the program's existence. Janet Reno took charge by announcing
she would require the FBI to change Carnivore's name.
The Justice Department also promised to appoint independent experts to evaluate
the program and to issue a report showing it posed no threat to privacy.
Several top academics snubbed the feds, doubting the review could be bona fide.
Late last month, the Justice Department proudly announced that a team
affiliated with the Illinois Institute of Technology would conduct a thorough
evaluation of Carnivore. The Justice Department is scheduled to release this
independent expert report exonerating the Carnivore system in December.
But glitches happen. The Justice Department posted an information file,
including the contract proposal, on the project on its Website. Key parts of
the researchers' resumes were blacked out — or so the Justice Department
thought. Computer buffs at www.cryptome.org easily opened the documents and
learned that among the "independent" experts is a top adviser to Mr. Clinton's
1992-93 transition team who performed several studies for federal agencies in
recent years, a former Justice Department lawyer, some consultants for the
Internal Revenue Service, and others who had top security clearances from the
National Security Agency and the Pentagon. The proposal promised that two of
its key experts would "be of special assistance in the public comment phase of
the project. . . . to help the public overcome popular myths and understand the
limitations associated with Carnivore."
Declan McCullagh, Wired News' ace reporter, noted "the irony of public
disclosure of personal information, by the very people who are in the midst of
claiming they can be trusted to protect it." On the other hand, perhaps the
hefty list of the Carnivore reviewers' government connections merely proves
they are "independent enough for Clinton administration work."
The same charade occurred with the "independent" company hired to evaluate the
film footage of the re-enactment of the FBI's final assault at Waco held
earlier this year at Fort Hood, Texas. The Justice Department endlessly
repeated that the Vector Data Systems is an independent British company.
However, Vector is actually owned by Anteon, a large American corporation whose
web page brags of its contracts with 50 federal agencies — including the White
House Communications Agency, the Pentagon and the Justice Department. Perhaps
the Justice Department assumes the best measure of the independence of a
company is how many federal contracts they have snared — and hope to receive in
the future. Not surprisingly, Vector provided the correct answers —thus seeking
to absolve the FBI of some of the most serious charges against it at Waco.
The recent "independence scams" should be no surprise. The Justice Department
has no concerns about conflict of interest because the government is presumed
to be incapable of committing any wrong. In a 1996 speech to government
prosecutors, Miss Reno declared: "All of you public lawyers are but little
lower than the angels, and I salute you." Miss Reno showed her belief in angels
in 1994 when she decreed that federal prosecutors would no longer be bound by
the ethics guidelines of state bar associations. Miss Reno's power grab for
federal prosecutors was unanimously condemned by the Conference of Chief
Justices, representing all the state supreme courts.
The longer Miss Reno clings to office, the more convinced she becomes that she
personifies justice. Consider her flip-flop on the independent counsel law.
Miss Reno urged Congress in 1993 to renew the independent counsel law because
"there is an inherent conflict whenever senior executive branch officials are
to be investigated by the department and its appointed head, the attorney
general." But the longer she served as attorney general, the more contemptuous
she became of public confidence in the justice system. Last year, she flipped
and told Congress that the existing law should be replaced with a system that
gave any attorney general unfettered authority to veto any indictments and to
fire any special counsel at any time on any pretext, thereby perpetually
politicizing investigations of wrongdoing by high-ranking government officials.
Miss Reno illustrated how the new system works with her choice of Clinton
golfing buddy John Danforth to head the most recent federal Waco whitewash.
Miss Reno and the Justice Department have rarely gone wrong overestimating the
gullibility of the American public and media. If George W. Bush wins next
month, Americans will have a better chance of finding the hidden skeletons in
the Justice Department's closet.
But the biggest mistake would be to expect the Justice Department to become
instantly trustworthy with Miss Reno's departure. Folks who go around giving
the name "Carnivore" to programs designed to stomp the hell out of privacy
cannot be trusted regardless of who is attorney general. The only sure way to
make the Justice Department respect justice is to dramatically reduce its size
and radically curtail its arbitrary power. Indeed, "Carnivore" should be a wake-
up jolt to any American who still believes governments are not predators.
James Bovard is the author of the just published "Feeling Your Pain: The
Explosion & Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton-Gore Years" (St. Martin's
Press).
Copyright © 2000 News World Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
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The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The libertarian therefore considers one of his prime educational
tasks is to spread the demystification and desanctification of the
State among its hapless subjects. His task is to demonstrate
repeatedly and in depth that not only the emperor but even the
"democratic" State has no clothes; that all governments subsist
by exploitive rule over the public; and that such rule is the reverse
of objective necessity. He strives to show that the existence of
taxation and the State necessarily sets up a class division between
the exploiting rulers and the exploited ruled. He seeks to show that
the task of the court intellectuals who have always supported the State
has ever been to weave mystification in order to induce the public to
accept State rule and that these intellectuals obtain, in return, a
share in the power and pelf extracted by the rulers from their deluded
subjects.
[[For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Murray N. Rothbard,
Fox & Wilkes, 1973, 1978, p. 25]]
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