Bruce Fein: Secret government?

[babylonsister]

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/23577

Secret government?
Submitted by davidswanson on Tue, 2007-06-12 18:04. Spying

By Bruce Fein, Washington Times

snip//

Secret government has been a signature of President Bush. Popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring, however, is a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or both, to borrow from James Madison.

The congressional power to investigate and expose executive branch maladministration or lawlessness is a mainstay of the rule of law, democratic discourse and political accountability. Yet Mr. Bush has systematically frustrated congressional oversight by flagrantly ill-founded invocations of so-called "executive privilege," i.e., the claimed power of the president to conceal from Congress professed national security secrets or presidential communications or internal executive branch deliberations in order to encourage candid advice.

snip//

Endeavoring to mislead or obstruct Congress is a federal crime. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has denied to Congress the existence of nontrivial dissent within the Bush administration over the legality of the NSA's warrantless spying in contravention of FISA. Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey has testified to the contrary, i.e., that the department was at odds with Vice President Dick Cheney over its legality.

Mr. Gonzales has also conceded the department's legal reasoning was "a dynamic, rather than a static process," another indication of internal wrangling.

At a June 7, 2007, oversight hearing by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, however, the department's assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, Stephen Bradbury, repeatedly refused to address internal legal deliberations concerning NSA spying, which could discredit Mr. Gonzales' previous assertion of consensus and expose him to prosecution for intentionally misleading Congress. The department's deliberations are also directly relevant to investigating criminal violations of FISA.

Some committee members challenged the silence, but nothing was done to compel disclosure -- no threats of voting contempt of Congress, of slashing Justice Department appropriations, or of initiating litigation. Such effeteness has left Congress and the American people generally clueless as to the scope and legality of a massive unchecked spying program that invades privacy and dampens dissent. As chronicled by the Church Committee hearings of three decades ago that occasioned FISA, the history of secret government is a history of abuses and wrongdoing to gain political advantage.




Bruce Fein is a constitutional lawyer and international consultant with Bruce Fein & Associates and the Lichfield Group. He is also chairman of the American Freedom Agenda, an organization devoted to restoring checks and balances and protections against government abuses.

[RufusTFirefly]

1. It's been fascinating to follow Fein's transformation

I remember how annoying he was back during the Reagan days.

[jaysunb]

2. Clintons days too

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