Archive for category: emptywheel

Via TPMM, the Director of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has resigned.

Wan J. Kim, Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’sCivil Rights Division, today announced his resignation, effective atthe end of this month. President Bush nominated Mr. Kim to the positionon June 16, 2005, and the Senate unanimously confirmed his appointmenton November 4, 2005. Mr. Kim, whose career in the Department of Justicehas spanned more than a decade, started in the Department of JusticeHonors Program as a trial attorney in the Criminal Division, and laterserved as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia. [my emphasis]

Um, today is August 23. The "end of the month," August 31, is approximately 6 business days away.

Where I come from in the business world, when a top executive quits with less than a month’s notice, he’s trying to hide something, usually the imminent collapse of his business unit. When a top executive quits with less than two week’s notice, that thing he’s hiding may involve legal repercussions.

Mr. Kim is getting out of Dodge in an awfully big hurry.

Wow. I’m with Spencer Ackerman. If transparency is going to kill Americans, Mike McConnell just killed a lot more Americans blabbing to the El Paso Times than a Congressional debate with marginal transparency ever will. Consider this example, where McConnell tries to convince the reporter that the Administration is not data-mining on a massive scale:

Now there’s a sense that we’re doing massive datamining. In fact, what we’re doing is surgical. A telephone number issurgical. So, if you know what number, you can select it out. Sothat’s, we’ve got a lot of territory to make up with people believingthat we’re doing things we’re not doing.

It’s not a detail we’ve had before, now we have it. And note his disingenuousness. The claim of opponents is not that the Administration is now doing massive data-mining (well, not through the NSA–they’ve just moved that program to the FBI). The claim is that they were doing massive data-mining up until March 2004, when Comey and much of DOJ balked. Which kind of explains the reason why there’s deep distrust.

And here’s another reason for that distrust.

Now the second part of the issue was under thepresident’s program, the terrorist surveillance program, the privatesector had assisted us. Because if you’re going to get access you’vegot to have a partner and they were being sued. Now if you play out thesuits at the value they’re claimed, it would bankrupt these companies.So my position was we have to provide liability protection to theseprivate sector entities.

What McConnell all but admits is that those lawsuits have merit–that there is a real possibility that having cooperated in the Administration’s ill-conceived spying program will bankrupt big telecom. Again, if those suits have merit, there’s a reason for the deep distrust–it’s because BushCo encouraged the telecoms to violate the privacy of their customers on a massive scale.

And finally, one more reason for the distrust.

We submitted the bill in April, had an open hearing1 May, we had a closed hearing in May, I don’t remember the exact date.Chairman (U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas) had two hearings and Ihad a chance to brief the judiciary committee in the house, theintelligence committee in the house and I just mentioned the Senate,did not brief the full judiciary committee in the Senate, but I didmeet with Sen. (Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.) and Sen. (Arlen Specter, R-Pa.),and I did have an opportunity on the Senate side, they have a traditionthere of every quarter they invite the director of nationalintelligence in to talk to them update them on topics of interest. Andthat happened in (June 27). [my emphasis]

McConnell did not give a private briefing to the Senate Judiciary Committee. And if his description is accurate, he didn’t give one to the Senate Intelligence Committee, either. The former, of course, has been reviewing these issues for a year and a half and has subpoenaed documents from the Administration on precisely this program, only to be denied. The notion that McConnell didn’t brief them (was he afraid they’d demand subpoenas?)–and that Leahy didn’t demand that he brief them–is a ridiculous affront to the legislative process. And to think Cheney would tell such a good ally as Leahy to go fuck himself.

Finally, one last reason for distrust. McConnell also revealed the reason the Administration refused the Democratic bill: because it provided a real mechanism to the minimization procedures (which are what ensure your side of the conversation is not kept when you’re calling to Pakistan).

So I walked over to the chamber and as I walkedinto the office just off the chamber, it’s the vice president’s office,somebody gave me a copy. So I looked at the version and said, ‘Can’t doit. The same language was back in there.’

Q: What was it?

A: Just let me leave it, not too much detail, there were things withregard to our authorities some language around minimization.

The Administration refused the Democratic bill because it required the someone besides McConnell and Alberto Gonzales to review the minimization procedures of the taps themselves, rather than just buying off on the minimization procedures as a general plan. And the Administration refused that minimum level of oversight.

And note–the decision that the Democratic bill was unacceptable occurred in Cheney’s Senate office.

Several people noted the announcement that DOD was shutting down the TALON database, wondering if the database was just going to be renamed down the line, as TIA seems to have morphed. Apparently they missed this detail:

It will be closed on Sept. 17 and information collected subsequently on potential terror or security threats to Defense Departmentfacilities or personnel will be sent by Pentagon officials to an FBIdatabase known as Guardian, according to Army Col. Gary Keck, aPentagon spokesman.

Give credit to William Arkin, who actually listed this database when he appeared on Democracy Now to talk about the Talon database:

AMY GOODMAN: Does this concern you?

WILLIAM ARKIN: What do you think? Of course, itconcerns me. I mean, I think that this is just one tiny picture of theactual amount of information which is collected by the F.B.I. and theintelligence community. We know that there are dozens of thesedatabases, Cornerstone, TALON, [inaudible], the Coast Guard ICCdatabase, the F.B.I. Guardian database, the F.B.I. TRRS database, theJoint Intelligence Task Force Counterterrorism Homeland Defensedatabase, the SSOMB database, the BTS summary, the C.I.A. TD database,the NSA traffic database called Criss-Cross. I mean, we know that thesedatabases are out there and that they all deal with domestic Read more →

At least that’s what I infer from the comments of the lawyer from the public defender’s nonprofit that will now take on Wilkes’ defense in one of two cases (thanks to chrisc for sending this on) he has been charged on.

A lawyer from Federal Defenders of San Diego Inc., a nonprofit thatrepresents indigent people accused of federal crimes, will representWilkes in the criminal case with co-defendant Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, theformer third-highest-ranking official at the CIA.

[snip]

Federal Defenders of San Diego has several experienced lawyers who havecleared stringent background checks, Frank Mangan, the nonprofit’ssenior litigator said in an interview. The attorneys have worked oncases of enemy combatants accused of terrorism and who are being heldin Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Mangan said.

One of the office’s 40 lawyers will appear with Wilkes at ahearing scheduled for next month. At that point, Burns is expected toset a new trial date in 2008.

At issue is that Wilkes’ selected lawyer, Mark Geragos, refused to get a security clearance in a case in which one of the charged crimes has to do with Wilkes and Foggo setting up an air service of the type the CIA uses to conduct its extraordinary renditions. The judge in the case, Larry Burns, threw Geragos off the case and, after reviewing Wilkes’ financial declaration, decided that Wilkes is now indigent and will have a government-paid lawyer. I kind of like the karma that Wilkes will likely be defended by a guy that has also defended the kinds of people Wilkes aspired to deliver unto torture.

In a post on the $80,000 settlement BushCo had to pay for ejecting two people wearing an anti-Bush (that is, pro-America) t-shirt from a presidential rally, Pam Spaulding links to the Advance Manual used to prepare for such presidential rallies; the government turned over a very heavily redacted copy of the Manual during the suit. The Manual makes for intriguing reason for those who have gotten bored with Orwell, in particular the description of the "rally squads"–college/young Republicans,  local athletic teams, or sororities/fraternities–recruited to drown out the voices of anti-Bush attendees. I don’t mean to suggest Democrats don’t contest negative messages in the same way. But please. Call them something besides "rally squads." (I may be particularly sensitive because, after I consistently kept the ultimate team up very late on a tournament trip once, and after he learned that my mother’s maiden name resembles "rally," mr. emptywheel dubbed me the "rally captain" for the rest of that season.)

But I noticed something else interesting about the manual. As is normal for a document redacted by the government, each of the redactions is marked as such (though the government did not provide explanations for the redactions). Except in one case: