If FBI Believes NYPD Spying Violates Americans’ Rights, Why Not Stop It?
It has long been clear that the AP series on the NYPD’s spying on NYC’s Muslims relied, in part, on FBI sources who believed the program to be problematic. Now a new edition of Ronald Kessler’s book on the voices that belief explicitly.
“What never came out is that the FBI considers the NYPD’s intelligence gathering practices since 9/11 not only a waste of money but a violation of Americans’ rights,” wrote Kessler, who in April broke news of Colombian sexcapades by Secret Service agents doing advance work for President Obama.
“We will not be a party to it,” an FBI source told Kessler.
This anonymous leaking comes not from some ACLU hippies–it comes from the FBI. So why don’t these leakers go arrest Ray Kelly?
Aside from the endorsement of the program Robert Mueller and John Brennan have given, I mean?
The White House added its stamp of approval a month later when President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser John Brennan visited police headquarters.
“I have full confidence that the NYPD is doing things consistent with the law, and it’s something that again has been responsible for keeping this city safe over the past decade,” he said.
Remember, Brennan–who was Deputy Executive Director of CIA when CIA helped to set up the CIA-on-the-Hudson–has boasted of intimate familiarity with the program.
Speaking of John Brennan, today is the 10 year anniversary of the torture memos. You know, torture? Another abuse that has never been prosecuted under Obama?
To reach a senior position in the federal government today, one has to be able to praise that which one most despises and to embrace an opposite position the next morning if a superior finds it politically or personally advantageous. This is not considered objectionable in the federal government because, after all, federal workers swear allegiance to their supervisors.
What’s that? The official oath says something different?
“I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”
5 U.S.C. §3331
Thank you, OPM. http://www.opm.gov/constitution_initiative/oath.asp
Maybe because the NYPD is better armed than the FBI?
Or because, emulating J. Edgar Hoover, Kelly has dirt on everyone?
Because if you start prosecuting the NYPD, someone is going to demand you prosecute Bradbury, Bybee, and Yoo.
Someone else besides me, that is:
Who should be surprised that Brennan found everything all legal? Isn’t that his specialty? Torture, warrantless wiretapping, whatever, its all perfectly legal in his elastic mind.
And, BTW, syntax alert re: end of second sentence. I can’t make any sense out of it.
Bob in AZ
I’ve been looking pretty closely at the crowds in London watching the Olympics, but I haven’t seen Bush, or Cheney, or Yoo, or Mukasey, or Rice, or Brennan over there to take in the Games. Hmmm. Isn’t there a SuperPac somewhere that could issue the invites, charter a plane, and touch down instead at some Spanish airport or the Hague? Or at least some intrepid reporter willing to put a microphone in Bush’s face as he watches the Rangers play the Angels, and ask this paragon of virtue whether he is missing out on the Olympics because he might get arrested for international war crimes if he went there?
The FBI wants to preserve its own right to spy and conduct dirty tricks on Americans. Their criticisms may be true, but are certainly self-serving, a case of the pot calling the kettle black.
As for having to go after Yoo, etc., how about one of their own: when FBI agent Gaudin, according to DoJ’s own IG, stayed behind at Mitchell and Jessen’s Thailand torture party to help out with the “enhanced interrogation'”?