What illegal "things" was the government doing in 2001-2004? (Glenn Greenwald)

[kpete]

Glenn Greenwald
Monday Sept. 15, 2008 09:44 EDT
What illegal "things" was the government doing in 2001-2004?

For the second consecutive day, The Washington Post has published an excerpt from reporter Barton Gellman's new book on the Cheney Vice Presidency, and it provides still more details on the intense confrontation in March, 2004 between the Bush Justice Department and the Cheney-led White House over the DOJ's refusal to certify the legality of the NSA's domestic spying activities. As has been known ever since Deputy Attorney General James Comey testified before the Senate in May, 2007, all of the top-level DOJ officials -- including Attorney General John Ashcroft, Comey and FBI Director Robert Mueller -- told President Bush they would resign immediately because Bush ordered the NSA surveillance program to continue even after his own Justice Department told him it was patently illegal.Comey drafted his resignation letter, calling Bush's spying activities "an apocalyptic situation" because he had "been asked to be a part of something that is fundamentally wrong."

Such an en masse resignation in the middle of an election year was averted only when Bush finally agreed to change certain aspects of the surveillance program in order to persuade these DOJ officials to endorse its legality. The illegal NSA spying program revealed by The New York Times in December, 2005 that created so much political controversy -- whereby the Bush administration was spying on Americans without the warrants required by law -- was a program that was actually endorsed and authorizedby these same DOJ officials. The program we learned about was the "compromise" program that Bush implemented in 2004 in order to avoid their resignation. That's how extreme -- what right-wing, executive-power-loving ideologues -- these DOJ officials are: they are the ones who authorized and endorsed the illegal NSA program that we came to learn about.

But whatever it was that the Bush administration was doing in spying on Americans for years prior to March, 2004 was so extreme, so patently illegal, so unconscionable that even these right-wing DOJ Bush appointees, who approved of the ultimate warrantless eavesdropping program, were ready to resign en masse if those spying activities continued. Here is how Gellman, in his book, describes the March, 2004 "compromise" that resulted in the "less illegal" and less extreme NSA spying program that the DOJ officials approved:

The FBI director was no more tractable than Comey. This was a rule-of-law question, he told the president, and the answer was in the Justice Department. The FBI could not participate in operations that Justice held to be in breach of criminal law. If those were orders, he would respectfully take his leave. . . .

Seven days later, Bush amended his March 11 directive. The legal certification belonged again to the attorney general. The surveillance program stopped doing some things, and it did other things differently. Much of the operation remained in place. Not all of it.

Think about that: in order to persuade the DOJ officials not to resign, "the surveillance program stopped doing some things, and it did other things differently." What "things" did the NSA stop doing in March, 2004 -- and what "things" did it start doing differently -- in order to convince Ashcroft, Mueller and Comey to remain in their jobs? This is one of the greatest political scandals of the Bush era -- not merely the commission of these illegal acts but the fact that they remain concealed from the public-- and it's also one of the most illustrative episodes of how our Government now works, of the extreme secrecy and illegality that characterizes it at its core, and of the complicity of both parties in all of this.

much more, plus some great links at:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/09/15/surveillance/index.html