Greenwald: Comey's testimony raises new and vital questions about the NSA scandal

[maddezmom]

Comey's testimony raises new and vital questions about the NSA scandal
The testimony yesterday from James Comey re-focuses attention on one of the long unresolved mysteries of the NSA scandal. And the new information Comey revealed, though not answering that question decisively, suggests some deeply troubling answers. Most of all, yesterday's hearing underscores how unresolved the entire NSA matter is -- how little we know (but ought to know) about what actually happened and how little accountability there has been for some of the most severe and blatant acts of presidential lawbreaking in the country's history.

The vital issue highlighted by Comey's testimony

President Bush ordered the NSA to engage in warrantless eavesdropping back in October 2001. The incidents which Comey described yesterday -- whereby the DOJ refused to certify the program's legality -- occurred in March, 2004, two-and-a-half years later. Since the NSA was spying on Americans outside of FISA the entire time, what prompted the DOJ suddenly to "reexamine" the legality of the program after all that time?

~snip~

The overarching point here, as always, is that it is simply crystal clear that the President consciously and deliberately violated the law and committed multiple felonies by eavesdropping on Americans in violation of the law.

Recall that the only federal court to rule on this matter has concluded that the NSA program violated both federal law and the U.S. Constitution, and although that decision is being appealed by the Bush administration, they are relying largely on technical arguments to have it reversed (i.e., standing and "state secrets" arguments) and -- as has been true for the entire case -- are devoting very little efforts to arguing that the program was actually legal or constitutional.

more:http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/05/16/nsa_comey/index.html?source=rss

[Demeter]

1. Can Any MSM Employee Honestly Say He Didn't Know?

Only if he's been in a coma for 6 years!

[maddezmom]

2. kick Glenn has some updates worth checking out

and here's a link to Laura Rozen's blog:
May 16, 2007
A reader raises a good point. Why were FBI director Mueller and the FBI so involved in Comey's decision-thinking on the NSA warrantless domestic spying program? Was this about a separate component of the program, that involved the FBI spying without warrants on Americans? Not just the NSA? Now that the Senate Judiciary committee anticipates a confirmation process for the DAG nominee, will its members ask to review some sort of list of those specifically targeted and who signed off on it and get a determination of why it was not possible to get a warrant for these people? And to get all the documents involved? It's hard to see who else can uphold the Constitution at this point. Comey was more than adamant in his testimony yesterday that these conservative Republican appointee Justice department officials -- he, Ashcroft, Goldsmith, Philbin -- could find no legal basis for the program until modifications were made. As Marty Lederman says, imagine just how bad it must have been. And Marty worked in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel until just over a year before the events described, so he's in a position to imagine that scenario pretty vividly.

Update: Did Gonzales lie under oath, when he said Comey did not object to the NSA domestic spying program whose existence the president confirmed? Or was he in fact suggesting that Comey's problem was with a second covert warrantless domestic spying program, one perhaps run by the FBI, such as I outline above?

Update II: After a conversation with a knowledgeable lawyer, I think I have at least a plausible theory of what roughly might have been going on. The NSA program targeted calls from terrorism suspects (however loosely defined) say from abroad to the States, and vice versa, without obtaining warrants, including for the US persons targeted. According to this speculative theory, the presumed second, FBI part of the program - the part that Comey and Goldsmith et al found objectionable, conceivably - then, without warrants, tracked all of the other communications that recipient made and received. How might the program have been brought into compliance when Comey et al objected? If the gov't decided to use the first part - the calls received from a terrorism suspect - as probable cause to obtain a warrant for all of the recipient's domestic and other communications. The problem? Getting a warrant could presumably cause the FISA judge to question why and how the target was identified in the first place. Maybe they found a way to get around the problem of illegal search and seizure. Just a theory.

As Balkinization's Lederman tells me, the relevant Congressional committees need to get all the documents from the DOJ. "They need to see the documents - about torture, about the NSA spying program, about military commissions, treaties, everything John Yoo wrote. And they have not appeared to be willing to get that. They just back down. Just yesterday, Comey says he can't talk about this, and can't talk about that. This is ridiculous. You don't give away NSA operational capabilities. You go into closed session for that. This is: we want to know what the legal theories were, what the programs were. ... Until the committees see the documents, they're totally speculating. If the Senate really wants to find out what's going on, they must get all the documents before them, and stop this nonsense."

more:http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/006129.html