Bush admin official (John Yoo) defends warrantless wiretaps

[sabra]

Source: AP

WASHINGTON — John Yoo, who wrote legal memos justifying the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program, defended the measure in an essay published Thursday.

Writing in The Wall Street Journal, Yoo said: "The best way to find an al-Qaida operative is to look at all e-mail, text and phone traffic between Afghanistan and Pakistan and the U.S. This might involve the filtering of innocent traffic, just as roadblocks and airport screenings do."

Yoo was responding to a report issued last week by a team of five federal inspectors general. The report questioned the legal justifications for the wide-ranging surveillance program started under President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The inspectors general were particularly critical of Yoo, a deputy assistant attorney general in Bush's Justice Department. The report said Yoo's analysis approving the program ignored a law designed to restrict the government's authority to conduct electronic surveillance during wartime, and did so without fully notifying Congress. And it said flaws in Yoo's memos later presented "a serious impediment" to recertifying the program.

...

Yoo accused the inspectors general of "responding to the media-stoked politics of recrimination, not consulting the long history of American presidents who have lived up to their duty in times of crisis."

Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ipCuoCbEqxcfAP3Pcm3gs3Y7M6xAD99FEF780

[ixion]

1. the big problem, Mr. Yoo, is that

it was ALL email and phone. NOT just Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Sorry, nice try. Now off to the Hague with Yoo.

[ScottLand]

2. Off to the Hague with Yoo

and send some of his former bosses to keep him company.

[Javaman]

3. me thinks he protests too much. nt

[pattmarty]

4. This fuckface has a couple of national newspapers as megaphones.............

............to use as propaganda for his probable upcoming indictment. This ass hole should be immediately fired from both the newspaper (Philadelphia enquirer??) and the law school at Berkeley.

[No Elephants]

5. Agreed. But he is a visiting prof now at Chapman. I say,

email them both.

http://www.chapman.edu/law/contact.asp

http://www.law.berkeley.edu/2120.htm?url=http://www.law.berkeley.edu/
\


And, if you know any alums, contact them and have them scream as well.

[Mz Pip]

12. I'm Berkeley Alum

and the next time they call me asking for money I will tell them that I refuse to donate one more cent as long as Yoo is a law professor there.

I doubt it will do much good, since the creep has tenure and tenured professors are hard to get rid of.

[surrealAmerican]

6. Defending the indefensible seems to be his specialty.

[jayfish]

8. What's The Obama Administrations Specialty?

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9135575/Obama_administration_defends_Bush_wiretapping

IDG News Service - Lawyers from the U.S. Department of Justice and the Electronic Frontier Foundation squared off in a San Francisco courtroom Wednesday over a warrantless wiretapping program instituted by the Bush administration.

The EFF sued the government and officials who implemented the secret program in September in an effort to get the government to stop the practice of recording communications involving U.S. citizens without a federal warrant. The EFF argues that this warrantless wiretapping is illegal, but government lawyers say the lawsuit should be thrown out because it could lead to the disclosure of state secrets.

The judge in the case, Vaughn Walker of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, already heard most of these arguments during an ongoing 2006 suit, Hepting v. AT&T, that also sought to put an end to the program. The EFF brought this second suit, Jewel v. NSA, after Congress passed a law last year that protected telecommunications companies like AT&T from lawsuits over the wiretapping.

On Wednesday, DoJ lawyer Anthony Coppolino argued that federal laws allow people to sue government employees who leak information, but do not let them sue the government itself. Coppolino added that litigating such cases could put state secrets at risk by exposing details of the government's anti-terrorist programs.

We need to stop giving him a pass on this shite.

Jay

[Piewhacket]

7. "best way"? BEST WAY???? The best way to explain your error to you , John Yoo...

is to shove a stick of dynamite up your bum, light it off
and stand back to watch the amusing fireworks.

But it would STILL be illegal
In addition, it would be wrong... possibly, regretfully.

So here's what we all think of Yoo and your insano-whack "opinions",
you sorry piece of pustulating scum. :puke:

[Brother Buzz]

9. John Yoo loves twisted logic like Shrub loved pretzels

A brief primer designed to help you understand John Yoo's idea of our new, streamlined American system of government.

Jon Carroll
Monday, January 2, 2006


Perhaps you have been unable to follow the intricacies of the logic used by John Yoo, the UC Berkeley law professor who has emerged as the president's foremost apologist for all the stuff he has to apologize for. I have therefore prepared a brief, informal summary of the relevant arguments:

Why does the president have the power to unilaterally authorize wiretaps of American citizens?

Because he is the president.

Does the president always have that power?

No. Only when he is fighting the war on terror does he have that power.

When will the war on terror be over?

The fight against terror is eternal. Terror is not a nation; it is a tactic. As long as the president is fighting a tactic, he can use any means he deems appropriate.

Why does the president have that power?

It's in the Constitution.

Where in the Constitution?

It can be inferred from the Constitution. When the president is protecting America, he may by definition make any inference from the Constitution that he chooses. He is keeping America safe.

Who decides what measures are necessary to keep America safe?

The president.

Who has oversight over the actions of the president?

The president oversees his own actions. If at any time he determines that he is a danger to America, he has the right to wiretap himself, name himself an enemy combatant and spirit himself away to a secret prison in Egypt.

But isn't there a secret court, the FISA court, that has the power to authorize wiretapping warrants? Wasn't that court set up for just such situations when national security is at stake?

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court might disagree with the president. It might thwart his plans. It is a danger to the democracy that we hold so dear. We must never let the courts stand in the way of America's safety.

So there are no guarantees that the president will act in the best interests of the country?

The president was elected by the people. They chose him; therefore he represents the will of the people. The people would never act against their own interests; therefore, the president can never act against the best interests of the people. It's a doctrine I like to call "the triumph of the will."

But surely the Congress was also elected by the people, and therefore also represents the will of the people. Is that not true?

Congress? Please.

It's sounding more and more as if your version of the presidency resembles an absolute monarchy. Does it?

Of course not. We Americans hate kings. Kings must wear crowns and visit trade fairs and expositions. The president only wears a cowboy hat and visits military bases, and then only if he wants to.

Can the president authorize torture?

No. The president can only authorize appropriate means.

Could those appropriate means include torture?

It's not torture if the president says it's not torture. It's merely appropriate. Remember, America is under constant attack from terrorism. The president must use any means necessary to protect America.

Won't the American people object?

Not if they're scared enough.

What if the Supreme Court rules against the president?

The president has respect for the Supreme Court. We are a nation of laws, not of men. In the unlikely event that the court would rule against the president, he has the right to deny that he was ever doing what he was accused of doing, and to keep further actions secret. He also has the right to rename any practices the court finds repugnant. "Wiretapping" could be called "protective listening." There's nothing the matter with protective listening.

Recently, a White House spokesman defended the wiretaps this way: "This is not about monitoring phone calls designed to arrange Little League practice or what to bring to a potluck dinner. These are designed to monitor calls from very bad people to very bad people who have a history of blowing up commuter trains, weddings and churches." If these very bad people have blown up churches, why not just arrest them?

That information is classified.

Have many weddings been blown up by terrorists?

No, they haven't, which is proof that the system works. The president does reserve the right to blow up gay terrorist weddings -- but only if he determines that the safety of the nation is at stake. The president is also keeping his eye on churches, many of which have become fonts of sedition. I do not believe that the president has any problem with commuter trains, although that could always change.

So this policy will be in place right up until the next election?

Election? Let's just say that we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. It may not be wise to have an election in a time of national peril.

[enviralment]

13. HAHAH

Brother Buzz you have hit the nail on the head with your cynic hammer.

[Piewhacket]

16. "fonts of sedition"? OMG, not those again! n/t

(thanks for the laugh Bro Buzz)

and that whole article by Jon Carrollis based on just ONE logic
error (petitio principii).

I'm sure we can find a few more problems with John Yoo's thinking
to poke fun at. here's the list of likely candidates.

http://eagar.mit.edu/EagarPresentations/tweagarwriting/logic.html

The dangerous lunatic Yoo (not you, YOO!) needs to be fired, disbarred,
imprisoned, then racked, not writing Op Eds.

[Solly Mack]

10. Of course he would

America just loves its war criminals....

[gratuitous]

11. Bernie Madoff defends investment strategy

Amounts to pretty much the same thing.

[Xenotime]

14. Thank goodness we have President Obama putting an end to all of this.

[pattmarty]

15. That WAS sarcasm, right????

[Senator]

17. Yoo defended...Yoo insisted...Yoo argued...Yoo accused...

Yoo disbarred, for a start.

Falsely accusing the Inspectors General of legal malpractice, based on zero evidence, is reason enough.

---

[Senator]

18. Great Countdown Segment On Yoo's Idiocy With Scott Horton

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/#31952656

[Boddingham]

19. Yoo = War Criminal, Violator Of The Constitution.

Send him to fucking prison along with Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, and the whole lot of the traitorous sons and daughters of bitches. :grr: