Your suggestion is a good one, but it wouldn't work. The US Department of Defense grants security clearances. They just have to deny the clearance application. I'm not sure if they have to provide a reason to deny it, but if they do they'd just say there is no need to know.

I think I read somewhere that this already happened. A group was investigating whether the administration violated the FISA law. They had to abandon the investigation because they couldn't get the necessary security clearances.

I find it absolutely disgusting how this administration abuses national security by classifying all evidence that they broke the law. They will leak the names of covert CIA operatives when it serves their purposes. Obviously, covering their asses is a higher priority than national security.

This is one of my favorite terms. I heard it used by a physician warning people against getting full body scans in the hope of preventing cancer. There is the danger of a 'false positive' in doing this. Nothing medically would indicate the presence of a pathology, but the scan may reveal something - some strange, unexplained shadow. Then, all the interventions may actually be worse than the benign peculiarity. This is how I think of your case. This is indeed, ironic to me. I began thinking of false positives in the reverse direction. What happens when 'information mining' turns up something that looks like terrorism, but isn't -- the Hitchockian "innocent man accused"? Look at how much we need fiction to make sense of all of this. Fiction, precedes (structures) knowledge and knowing. Wasn't that what the judge and the attorney were arguing about? Indeed, at the onset the authors say they are looking for fiction to help them make their case against unseen (unheard) arguments. This really isn't hard, because the arguments are hidden in plain sight. I know this as a literature professor. So, let me suggest two or three works. The first is Edgar Allen Poe's "The Purloined Letter." Then you might read Jacques Lacan's analysis of the short story - paying particular attention to his ideas about "anticipated certitude." Then, you might end by reading Jean François Lyotard's book The Differend. He does a brilliant analysis of the role of fiction in prosecution and "political trials." All of this can be solved in we only find the right fictions, the right metaphors (please, no more ticking time bombs - a fiction if there ever was one - and '24'!). Then, the veil will magically drop from the eyes of citizens, judges and politicians. Then, look out!

It's compartmentalized at lateral levels anyway. So even if you had 'Top' clearance it wouldn't provide blanket access to anything just because it was labeled 'Top'.

BTW even a lower level clearance like Sci/Tech takes 18 months to get.

What is increasingly troublesome is the increasing boldness of judges in intervening in matter beyond their constitutional authority, even matters of foreign policy are subject to judicial review. Judicial overreach has been the subject of concern since the days of Thomas Jefferson, when he noted shortly before his death, how the federal bench had greatly enlarged the powers of the federal government, and that it was never intended that the federal courts should be so powerful. In my view is that an independent judiciary should not encroach on an independet legislature or an independent executive beyond settling the narrow matter of the rights of the parties in the suit.

There's a reason that - in some circles - these bozos are known as Can't Investigate Anything and Folls & Buffoons, Inc.

The "state secrets" privilege was originally based on a lie - 50 years later we discover the government was hiding "evidence" that proved the truth of the lawsuit. As history demonstrates, they've been lying about everything else ever since.

In order to originally freeze the assets, what evidence did they use? How did they obtain that information? Could you show that it couldn't have been obtained any other way than thru the wiretaps? There had to have been a judge at some point making a determination on this issue and evidence had to have been presented.

As noble a cause that Eisenberg is pursing, he forgot to mention a couple of details. You can just read about them here (look for Al-Haramain):

http://www.un.org/sc/committees/1267/consoltablelist.shtml

or here:

http://www.interpol.int/public/Data/NoticesUN/Notices/Data/2005/75/2005_17675.asp

But Eisenberg, keep on fighting the good fight. If a US government official forgot to cross a T on these guys, we NEED to know about it. ANYTHING to exonerate them!

The FISA court would have handed over a warrant for a felafel sandwich after 911. The administration, not the defense here, upped the ante.

Wasn't there another crime here? Someone in the US government leaked the document. That is a crime, right? Shouldn't the document itself be evidence of that leak? Go after the leaker, and discovery can reveal the mere existence of the document.

I wondered whether this meant that the portion of my brain that remembers the Document is also "derivatively classified," making its presence in my skull unlawful.

Not only was this story enlightening, your writing was also riveting.

What benefit are we as a country getting from all this secrecy? It has been and is abused over and over. Many times we as a country have been harmed by all these secret operations.

I've thought for many years that we should just eliminate the CIA, and all government secrecy laws. Of course, that's unlikely to ever happen, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be attempted.

--Ron

Yup, they may be bad guys. They may be criminals. Determining if they are is what we have trials for, and for that system to work, attorney-client priviledge is key. That's what was violated here through the illegal wiretap. If you don't think that's important, then I'm sure you wouldn't mind, if you were ever arrested, from having all your conversations with your lawyer taped and provided to the prosecution. Or would you?