Mueller (The New John Dean?) Outs Cheney as Warrantless Wiretapping Wizard

[kpete]

All Cheney, no Bush. With the exception of the famous meeting where Mueller met Bush directly, Bush was uninvolved, at least from Mueller's perspective. Cheney, on the other hand, attended all the group meetings (though Card was in charge of twisting Mueller's and Comey's arms). And the final meeting Mueller felt the need to record was one with Cheney. Is there any doubt, then, when Gonzales say "at the behest of the President," he really means, "Dick"?
http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/0...

................

Mueller Outs Cheney as Warrantless Wiretapping Wizard
by drational
Fri Aug 17, 2007 at 05:27:21 AM PDT

Thanks to superfluous information provided by Robert Mueller, we now have a good indication of who was behind the initiation and execution of the NSA-driven Warrantless Wiretapping Program:

......................

It is clear from the Mueller notes that the final word on the Warrantless Surveillance Program and the Hospital visit was Vice President Cheney's. The Buck Stopped there.


Interestingly, Mueller was asked to provide notes on his conversations with Mueller and Ashcroft, but atypical for the Bush Administration, he provided much more information. Specifically, he left unredacted portions of his notes about events preceeding and following the Hospital Visit.

Importantly, the First meeting with the Principal Administration architects of the Program was held on March 9, 2004, and the highest ranking Administration official in the room was the Vice President.






Importantly, Mueller did not have to reveal the other meetings not involving Comey or Ashcroft, and to have done so here generates many more questions than it answers. For Mueller to have revealed this information, rather than cover it up as the Administration would almost certainly have preferred, suggests that we may have found this Administration's version of John Dean.

more at:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/8/17/72314/8654

[MannyGoldstein]

1. Mueller Is Really, Really Pissed

I caught Mueller's testimony to some Congressional commitee (I forget which) on CSPAN a few weeks ago re: Gonzales and Card's excellent hospital adventure. Mueller was clearly extremely pissed and disgusted at what had transpired.

[GeorgeGist]

11. Oh really ...

he said 3yrs too late.

[mod mom]

2. Mueller has shown there are those involved in the administration who place the constitution

over the politics. They are our hope for returning the rule of law to this country.

[rodeodance]

3. so cheney runs our government. Surprize! --and Gonzo writes up the legal statements.

what a pair!

[mod mom]

4. drational has provided much insight @ kos and muckraker (comments). Here is Anon Liberal's

interesting take from Anon Liberal:

There's another item in the notes, however, that was news to me. In describing the scene at the hospital, Mueller writes:

At hospital. Card and J. Gonzales have come and gone. Comey tells me that they saw the AG and were told by the AG that he was in no condition to decide issues, and that Comey was the Acting AG. All matters were to be taken to him, but that he supported the Acting AG's position. The AG then reviewed for them the legal concerns relating to the program. The AG also told them that he was barred from obtaining the advice he needed on the program by the strict compartmentalization rules of the WH.

The clear implication here is that John Ashcroft, the man who has supposedly been signing off on this program for two years at this point, felt that crucial information had been withheld from him, information that was necessary to determine whether the program was legal.

http://www.anonymousliberal.com/

This point has been the subject of much discussion on the blogosphere. Was crucial info withheld from Ashcroft or was he put in a place similar to Jay Rockefeller where he was not allowed to seek legal consultation regarding it and just went along until Comey and other who were briefed discussed and made Ashcroft understand the legal implications. Ashcroft and his wife should be subpoenaed.

Again, it appears that all roads lead to Cheney.

[The Backlash Cometh]

7. Compartimentalizing the information.

Isn't that what the White House is trying to do to the three judges now reviewing the wiretapping law? Not giving them the information they need to make a decision other than the decision the White House wants?

This is beyond belief, that there are so many stupid fucking Republicans backing these criminals and allowing them to make a mockery of the greatest nation in the world.

[mod mom]

14. this is abolutely why there must be no concessions or backing down from confronting

what has occurred and is occurring.

[ThomWV]

16. 2 things

First, notice that Mueller was not in the room - he is just recounting what Comey told him. That bothers me.

Second, I don't think that Ashcroft had signed off on the program before the hospital visit. It was my understanding that the program was up and running pending a protracted review from Justice, and this was the first time the paper had to be signed.

However another avenue worth pursuing would be this. Yesterday I read somewhere that either Card or Gonzo had testified that they weren't actually there to get something approved. That differers considerably from Comey's testimony, in which he said that they carried an envelope with the approve in it for the AG's signature. One lie is just as perjurious (is that even a word?) as another, so I think this may be one worth following up on.

[UTUSN]

5. K&R#5 n/t

[myrna minx]

6. While I appreciate that he voluntarily produced this information,

it's just pathetic that it's taken this long for him to (apparently) put country before political allegiance.

[seemslikeadream]

8. first link not working

:hi:

[kpete]

10. here:

http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/08/muellers-chrono.html#more

[mod mom]

17. You gotta love Marcy's snark with her outrage:

"Did you ever notice that if you take a log recording the events regarding an illegal surveillance program, and redact the heck out of it, it looks like a chronology that a dirty fucking hippy blogger might write? Below you can read what's left of Mueller's log, with my notes. The big takeaways are:

Mueller refers to a "program," singular. Which backs up what everyone has been saying: Gonzales is a lying sack. There was one program that was the subject of a DOJ revolt, not the parsing tidbits of programs Gonzales would like to pretend there were.
All Cheney, no Bush. With the exception of the famous meeting where Mueller met Bush directly, Bush was uninvolved, at least from Mueller's perspective. Cheney, on the other hand, attended all the group meetings (though Card was in charge of twisting Mueller's and Comey's arms). And the final meeting Mueller felt the need to record was one with Cheney. Is there any doubt, then, when Gonzales say "at the behest of the President," he really means, "Dick"?
Mueller almost seemed to be a go-between between those in DOJ preparing to resign and the White House, with Gonzales as the point of contact.

[lovuian]

9. But Bush protects them He doesn't fire Gonzales

He protects them ...that kinda says they are doing his bidding

[peacetalksforall]

12. It was obvious Cheney was in charge starting on 9-11. It was

suspected that he was in charge before that based on revealed capabilities between the two - even during the campaign.

I've always said that Rove was one of the most important aides to Cheney - he had to prep George for speeches and meetings based on activites of Cheney. In addition, Rove had to live up to his reputation for spinning and deceiving. Rove was the middleman between the political arm of the RNC and Cheney. Rove had great powers along with Card.

[sutz12]

13. Surprise, surprise....a secretive asshole spies on other people.

Psych 101. Psychopaths project their own darkest fears on others. Cheney obviously lives in dire fear of the old 'going to school naked' dream, so thinks everybody else shares his delusions and must be carefully watched so they don't act out.

:shrug:

[mod mom]

15. More good coverage from Muck re why Ashcroft might have signedoff on it:

"This, however, seems like two sides of the same coin. If Ashcroft couldn't consult with senior legal advisers about Program X, the White House was essentially keeping Ashcroft -- and the Justice Department -- in the dark about the legal basis for the surveillance program, expecting him to simply bless the effort without asking too many questions. After all, Ashcroft's tenure showed a consistent deference to presidential prerogative -- most notably, when he warned the Senate about the Patriot Act that "those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists." If Ashcroft couldn't vet the program with his legal advisers, it's an open question about what he really "knew" about its legality. Sure enough, as soon as the program was opened to Ashcroft's deputy, Jim Comey, a longtime U.S. attorney and Justice official, Comey saw a program riddled with legal problems."

-snip

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003942.php#more

[mod mom]

18. From Wired (Via Muck) FBI Office may Link to NSA

FBI Office Under Investigation Involved in Secret Spying Controversy
By Ryan Singel August 16, 2007 | 8:08:32 PM






-snip

The morning that the Justice Department told the White House that it had changed its mind about the secret spying and wouldn't renew its legal sign-off, Mueller's notes indicates he met with the FBI's General Counsel Valerie Caproni; John Pistole - then the Executive Assistant Director for Counterterrorism and Counterintelligence; and most intriguingly, Michael Fedarcyk - the first Section Chief of the Communication Exploitation Section, Counterterrorism Division.


As only Wired News has reported, the Communications Exploitation Section is already under criminal investigation by the FBI and the Justice Department's Inspector General Glenn Fine for sending misleading "emergency" letters to the nation's telecoms to get thousands of Americans' phone records. Those fake "exigent letters" were first revealed by the Inspector General's report on the abuse of a key Patriot Act power, known as a National Security Letter.

Fedarcyk looks to be the lowest ranking member at that meeting (Wainstein seems to have been former General Counsel, while Gebhardt was a Deputy Director) -- meaning that his office was likely centrally involved somehow in the secret surveillance -- perhaps only as a receiver of leads from the NSA -- perhaps as a partner in the government's alleged data-mining of U.S. citizens phone and internet usage records.

The Communications Exploitation Section "analyzes terrorist electronic and telephone communications and identifies terrorist associations and networks," according to 2004 testimony from Pistole.



http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/08/fbi-office-unde.html

at Muck:

Wired: FBI Office May Link to NSA Surveillance

By Spencer Ackerman - August 17, 2007, 12:22 PM

Wired's Ryan Singel has a great find in his review of FBI Director Robert Mueller's March 2004 notes on the warrantless-surveillance imbroglio. One of the aides Mueller met with the day Acting Attorney General James Comey likely informed him that he wouldn't reauthorize the surveillance program is Michael A. Fedarcyk, then the chief of the Counterterrorism Division's Communications Exploitation Section. That meeting may shine a light into how information generated from the National Security Agency's surveillance of international communications made its way into domestic terrorism investigations.

The Communications Exploitation Section is where FBI counterterrorism analysts sift through communications of suspected terrorists to determine patterns of communication within the U.S. to discover hidden networks. Singel notes that Fedarcyk's presence at the March 9, 2004 morning meeting with Mueller indicates that his office was involved, somehow, in the NSA surveillance effort: "perhaps only as a receiver of leads from the NSA -- perhaps as a partner in the government's alleged data-mining of U.S. citizens phone and internet usage records."

Given how "strict compartmentalization rules" from the White House limited officials' knowledge of the surveillance program, it's unclear what Fedarcyk would have known about the legal basis for a program that his office may have been connected to. But a subsection of that office, known as the Communications Analysis Unit, was found by the Justice Department's Inspector General to have improperly sent at least 739 so called "exigent letters" -- emergency demands for records -- to phone companies in non-emergency cases between 2003 and 2005, amounting to requests for information on over 3,000 phone numbers. The urgency might, perhaps, be explained by tips generated from the NSA surveillance effort into potential terrorists operating in the United States.

Singel reported exclusively last month that the FBI and the DOJ inspector general's office have a joint investigation open into the Communications Analysis Unit -- possibly a criminal one -- as the unit doesn't itself have the authority to issue an exigent letter.

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003947.php#more

[EVDebs]

21. Hmmm. Greg Palast's 'Khan Job' article mentions an NSA policy shift pre-9/11

which, if tied to the FBI, explains a lot.

http://www.gregpalast.com/khan-job-bush-spiked-probe-of-pakistan%E2%80%99s-dr-strangelove-bbc-reported-in-2001/

[mod mom]

22. wow, these statements from Palast say a lot:

A top-level CIA operative who spoke with us on condition of strictest anonymity said that, after Bush took office, “There was a major policy shift” at the National Security Agency. Investigators were ordered to “back off ” from any inquiries into Saudi Arabian financing of terror networks, especially if they touched on Saudi royals and their retainers. That put the Bin Ladens, a family worth a reported $12 billion and a virtual arm of the Saudi royal household, off limits for investigation.

"In fact, according to the British news teams’ sources within US intelligence agencies, shortly after President Bush’s inauguration, his National Security Agency (NSA) effectively stymied the probe of Khan Research Laboratories, the Pakistani agency in charge of the bomb project. CIA and other agents told BBC they could not investigate the spread of ‘Islamic Bombs’ through Pakistan because funding appeared to originate in Saudi Arabia."

[bleever]

19. K&R for good stuff at the links.

It'll make a good movie someday.

[EVDebs]

20. What earthly reason to black out all that info ? CYA and I ain't gotta show you no stinkin' badges

FOIA means nothing nowadays. No national security just personal security matters. Laughable. Ayn Rand b.s. to the max.