The leak designed to save Alberto Gonzales by Glenn Greenwald

[applegrove]

The leak designed to save Alberto Gonzales
(updated below)
by Glenn Greenwald at Salon
July 29, 2007

"Anonymous sources seeking to protect Alberto Gonzales have leaked to the NYT the claim that what triggered the 2004 DOJ dispute over the NSA program "involved computer searches through massive electronic databases" -- i.e, "data mining" of the "records of the phone calls and e-mail messages of millions of Americans." The Post has amplified the leak.

The claim, passed on by anonymous pro-Bush sources, is rather obviously intended to exonerate Alberto Gonzales by claiming that he told the truth when he said that the 2004 DOJ dispute did not involve the NSA's warrantless eavesdropping program (because, instead, the dispute concerned "data mining"). Like the well-trained followers that they are, authoritarian Bush supporters are already seizing this leak to proclaim Alberto Gonzales vindicated.

For multiple reasons -- many of them obvious -- these stories accomplish no such thing. Can reporters covering the Gonzales story please do something other than write down the claims of pro-Gonzales sources and just use your brains a little bit:

(1) Anonymous Liberal points out the painfully obvious:

Let me start by pointing out what seems to be a flaw in this argument. For this defense to even arguably work, it has to be true that Comey and Goldsmith's objections were limited to data-mining activities and in no way pertained to any of the activities the President confirmed in December of 2005. But this graf from the Post piece seems to undercut that claim:

.........SNIP"

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

[WCGreen]

1. There you have it....

Clean as a whistle...

No guilt anywhere near this guy...

You can all go home now, you silly silly partisan democrats...

[salin]

11. Someone in the admin leaking national security classified info to protect a bushbot butt?

Who would have thought that was possible... er... or... "here we go again!"

[Metta]

2. A great, thorough Salon article.

Deflates the latest * b.s. willingly regurgitated by the NYT and WP.

[cutlassmama]

3. I knew someone would come save his lying butt, pathetic eom

[KAT119]

4. K&R

[Jim__]

5. The sad fact is that the press will probably run with the 'Gonzo vindicated" meme - n/t

[applegrove]

6. It was obvious he was "parsing" during his testimony.

[creeksneakers2]

7. What about all the other lies Gonzo told?

The Bush cabal has succeeded in focusing all the complaints down to one thing Gonzo said, then refuting that. What about no meetings on US Attorneys, etc?

[seafan]

8. Glen Greenwald: It isn't about Gonzo's perjury. It's about data mining vs warrantless wiretapping:

At Salon:

Marty Lederman -- in the "P.S." section of a long post analyzing the legal implications of "data mining" -- again makes a point that I have also emphasized several times this week and will likely keep emphasizing. Namely, whatever one's views are on how strong of a perjury charge one can mount here against Gonzales for this specific testimony -- and I have gone back and forth on that question several times this week -- that is but a mere sideshow in the NSA scandal.

The NSA scandal is not now and never has been about perjury. It is about highly illegal spying activities by our government on American citizens.

The scandal arose because the Bush administration spied on Americans illegally for many years and concealed its criminality. It did so (a) by eavesdropping on the telephone calls of Americans without warrants even though FISA makes it a felony to do that, and (b) by engaging in the even-worse though still unknown spying activities which caused Ashcroft, Comey, Mueller et al. to threaten to quit if it did not cease.

This is where the focus should be, and my concern from the start about the Gonzales perjury focus is that it would overshadow that far more important issue. We cannot spend the next 18 months in a mind-numbing semantic debate over what the "TSP" means or does not mean in the administration's misleading testimony and public statements. That is far afield from the real criminality here and it will obscure it. As Lederman says:

The focus now, in other words, should be on the substance of the NSA and FBI conduct, on DOJ's justifications therefore, and on the breakdown in the separation of powers -- and not the parsing of the Attorney General's testimony, which has never been useful for anyone in Congress anyway.

What was the administration doing prior to 2004 that was so illegal that the entire top level of the DOJ threatened to quit over it? It's nice that the Senate Judiciary Committee wants a criminal investigation concerning Gonzales' perjury.

But the real criminal investigation that is needed here -- and that has been needed for quite some time -- is an investigation over the underlying surveillance crimes -- both warrantless eavesdropping and whatever else it was that they were doing that caused the DOJ mutiny on the ground that it was against the law.

This is it, in a nutshell.

[Maribelle]

9. I don't think this is about data mining vs warrantless wiretapping

As Glenn said this is all about : "What was the administration doing prior to 2004 that was so illegal that the entire top level of the DOJ threatened to quit over it." It wasn't data mining. It wasn't warrantless eavesdropping.


What was Bush up to then? We currently have no idea.

[Up2Late]

10. Daniel Schorr did a nice commentary on this today on NPR...

Selective 'Leaks' from the Bush Administration

By Daniel Schorr

Listen to this story...

All Things Considered, July 30, 2007 · NPR Senior News Analyst Daniel Schorr talks about selective leaking by the Bush administration, and what it tells us.

<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=12359143>