Letter from Conyers to Gonzales on “Massive Electronic Databases”

[babylonsister]

http://www.speaker.gov/blog/?p=639

Judiciary Chairs Write Gonzales on “Massive Electronic Databases”
July 30th, 2007 by Jesse Lee

Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, along with Subcommittee Chairmen Jerrold Nadler and Robert “Bobby” C. Scott, sent the attached letter to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, following weekend reports that disputes over the NSA’s terrorist surveillance program involved “massive electronic databases.”

Full text of the letter:

July 30, 2007

BY FAX AND U.S. MAIL

The Honorable Alberto R. Gonzales
Attorney General of the United States
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20530

Dear Mr. Attorney General:

We read with interest the disclosures in yesterday’s New York Times and Washington Post that a 2004 dispute over the NSA’s secret surveillance program which led to threatened resignations by Department officials involved a “massive electronic database” program.

We have two potential concerns with the disclosure. First, at a time when the Administration is seeking to make changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, it is imperative that all members of the House Judiciary Committee be fully apprised of these controversial, and possibly unlawful, programs, and any related programs. It is difficult to craft appropriate legislative responses unless we have all of the relevant facts concerning these programs.

We have previously requested background information on the so-called “warrantless wiretapping,” “Terrorist Surveillance Program,” or their predecessors, as set forth in letters to you dated January 19, February 1, and May 17, 2007, and have also sought from you the same information being sought by the Senate Judiciary Committee related to these programs and we would reiterate those requests here. We now request copies of all opinions, memoranda, and background materials, as well as any dissenting views, materials, and opinions regarding the same, concerning the data base program disclosed by the media yesterday.

Second, we are concerned that this disclosure, stemming from “current and former officials briefed on the program,” may simply be an effort to respond via Administration leak of potentially classified information designed to rehabilitate previous controversial testimony by you. In this regard, we would inquire whether you or anyone in your front office has any knowledge or involvement in these leaks, and if so, who and the nature thereof.

We look forward to a response at your earliest possible convenience. Please provide us with the requisite information by delivering a copy to us at the Judiciary Committee office, 2138 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515 (tel: [phone]; fax: [phone]). Please contact the Judiciary Committee office if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

John Conyers, Jr.
Chairman

Jerrold Nadler
Chairman, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties

Robert C. Scott
Chairman, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security

cc: Honorable Lamar S. Smith

Honorable Trent Franks

Honorable J. Randy Forbes

Honorable Brian A. Benczkowski

[IChing]

1. Please, just start the impeachment proceedings and stop this

"We look forward to a response at your earliest possible convenience" crap.

[rodeodance]

2. Conyers also implicitly criticized the administration for allowing this information to leak when the

from raw story:


Conyers also implicitly criticized the administration for allowing this information to leak when they failed to comply with other Congressional requests for information.

"t a time when the Administration is seeking to make changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, it is imperative that all members of the House Judiciary Committee be fully apprised of these controversial, and possibly unlawful, programs, and any related programs," he wrote to the Attorney General. "It is difficult to craft appropriate legislative responses unless we have all of the relevant facts concerning these programs."

Conyers subsequently asked for "all opinions, memoranda, and background materials, as well as any dissenting views, materials, and opinions regarding the same, concerning the data base program disclosed by the media yesterday."

The letter from Conyers was also signed by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, and Rep. Robert C. Scott (D-VA), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security.

[MissWaverly]

3. But Hayden said they never did that

so either Hayden is right or the leaker is right, but not both.

January 23, 2006
Hayden Delivers Impassioned Defense of NSA

And so even though I knew the program had been reviewed by the White House and by DOJ, by the Department of Justice, I asked the three most senior and experienced lawyers in NSA: Our enemy in the global war on terrorism doesn't divide the United States from the rest of the world, the global telecommunications system doesn't make that distinction either, our laws do and should; how did these activities square with these facts?

They reported back to me. They supported the lawfulness of this program. Supported, not acquiesced. This was very important to me. A veteran NSA lawyer, one of the three I asked, told me that a correspondent had suggested to him recently that all of the lawyers connected with this program have been very careful from the outset because they knew there would be a day of reckoning. The NSA lawyer replied to him that that had not been the case. NSA had been so careful, he said -- and I'm using his words now here -- NSA had been so careful because in this very focused, limited program, NSA had to ensure that it dealt with privacy interests in an appropriate manner.

Let me talk for a few minutes also about what this program is not. It is not a driftnet over Dearborn or Lackawanna or Freemont grabbing conversations that we then sort out by these alleged keyword searches or data-mining tools or other devices that so-called experts keep talking about.

This is targeted and focused. This is not about intercepting conversations between people in the United States. This is hot pursuit of communications entering or leaving America involving someone we believe is associated with al Qaeda. We bring to bear all the technology we can to ensure that this is so. And if there were ever an anomaly, and we discovered that there had been an inadvertent intercept of a domestic-to-domestic call, that intercept would be destroyed and not reported. But the incident, what we call inadvertent collection, would be recorded and reported. But that's a normal NSA procedure. It's been our procedure for the last quarter century. And as always, as we always do when dealing with U.S. person information, as I said earlier, U.S. identities are expunged when they're not essential to understanding the intelligence value of any report. Again, that's a normal NSA procedure.

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/012915.php

[jimshoes]

4. Somebody's got some splainin' to do.

So many lies, so many recordings of every one of their lies, and bloggers to report the lies. They thought with the bought off media they could just pull the wool over the people's eyes and nobody would take the time to debunk the lies. The internets have upset their applecart.

[MissWaverly]

5. yes, maybe they should just keep a diary

to keep their story straight. Yes, I am surprised that the big brained MSM that is always sneering at us, didn't refer back to
Hayden's statement, since they are objective and we are just bloggers that sit around wearing pjs and emoting in somebody's basement.

:-)

[Zodiak]

8. Which, in their minds, means

Al Gore upset their applecart.

Karma and all that biz.

[MissWaverly]

6. Here's a snip from the NY Times article

WASHINGTON, July 28 — A 2004 dispute over the National Security Agency’s secret surveillance program that led top Justice Department officials to threaten resignation involved computer searches through massive electronic databases, according to current and former officials briefed on the program.

The confrontation in 2004 led to a showdown in the hospital room of then Attorney General John Ashcroft, where Mr. Gonzales, the White House counsel at the time, and Andrew H. Card Jr., then the White House chief of staff, tried to get the ailing Mr. Ashcroft to reauthorize the N.S.A. program.

Mr. Gonzales insisted before the Senate this week that the 2004 dispute did not involve the Terrorist Surveillance Program “confirmed” by President Bush, who has acknowledged eavesdropping without warrants but has never acknowledged the data mining.

If the dispute chiefly involved data mining, rather than eavesdropping, Mr. Gonzales’ defenders may maintain that his narrowly crafted answers, while legalistic, were technically correct.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/washington/29nsa.html?n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fOrganizations%2fN%2fNational%20Security%20Agency

[MissWaverly]

7. Look this is amazing, Wash Post quotes NY Times

They did not attempt to verify just ran the same story. This is the same way the information on Iraq was presented. Now everyone
is saying that the NY Times and Washington Post say data base mining was basis for hospital bed arm twisting, when they are both the same article.

Data Mining Figured In Dispute Over NSA

Report Links Program to Gonzales Uproar

By Dan Eggen and Joby WarrickWashington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, July 29, 2007

A fierce dispute within the Bush administration in early 2004 over a National Security Agency warrantless surveillance program was related to concerns about the NSA's searches of huge computer databases, the New York Times reported today.
The agency's data mining was also linked to a dramatic chain of events in March 2004, including threats of resignation from senior Justice Department officials and an unusual nighttime visit by White House aides to the hospital bedside of then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, the Times reported, citing current and former officials briefed on the program.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/28/AR2007072801401.html