Letters to the Editor
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Especially...
...if the target isn't limited to terrorists.
You're right, your point is still intact, although if the search was really for foreign terrorists, and only terrorists, the NSA still has better seeds.
Personally, I think it's the Vanunu principle: When Vanunu spilled the beans on the Israeli nuclear project, the project had been so undercover, and so unconstrained, that over time the goal morphed, and once combined with a striving to surpass, had eventually produced a bomb with no use: It was so big that using it on any of Israel's enemies would have caused fallout on Israel itself.
This project has been so secretive and so unconstrained that it probably is no longer in any way constrained to use on real enemies anymore.
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Especially...
if the target isn't limited to terrorists.
Could not agree more. If you look my post I had "terrorists" in quotes. I think Democrats currently qualify as terrorists under the current secret definition.
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Goldsmith
GG:
"This is the real heart of the Comey story -- What happened between September 2001 and October 2003, before Comey and Goldmsith came aboard? Just how radical were the Administration's legal judgments? How extreme were the programs they implemented? How egregious was the lawbreaking?"
Thanks for this, and for the link to Lederman's post, which links to an older (2005) post of his that suggested two possible reasons for Goldsmith's rejection of Yoo's reasoning:
All of which is to say that there were very significant disincentives for Jack Goldsmith to repudiate the Yoo memo. And yet he did so, very early in his tenure at OLC, and in a way that was likely to displease some important clients within the Administration. What might have caused Goldsmith to withdraw OLC's approval of the Yoo memo? Unless and until we know more from the principal players, and until we see the Yoo memo itself, we will not know for sure.
But two possibilities come to mind.
The first is that the Department of Justice had gotten wind of some of the abuses in interrogations that had occurred in Cuba, Iraq and Afghanistan, had recognized how rapidly its March legal conclusions had generated atrocities, and wished to limit the damage.
[...]
Second, and more likely, is that the legal analysis in the Yoo memo was simply so far outside the realm of traditional OLC norms that Goldsmith—when he reviewed the memo carefully—felt he had little choice but to repudiate it.
As Lederman points out, this is the same Jack Goldsmith that Leahy expressed strong concerns about during his confirmation hearing:
http://leahy.senate.gov/press/200307/070803a.html
... and who, when he resigned and was recruited to Harvard, inspired a boycott:
http://www.lawschool.com/boycottharvard.htm
...although he's also been hailed as an ethical hero:
In the summer of 2004, Goldsmith, 43, had left his post in George W. Bush's Washington to become a professor at Harvard Law School. Stocky, rumpled, genial, though possessing an enormous intellect, Goldsmith is known for his lack of pretense; he rarely talks about his time in government. In liberal Cambridge, Mass., he was at first snubbed in the community and mocked as an atrocity-abetting war criminal by his more knee-jerk colleagues. ICY WELCOME FOR NEW LAW PROF, headlined The Harvard Crimson.
They had no idea. Goldsmith was actually the opposite of what his detractors imagined. For nine months, from October 2003 to June 2004, he had been the central figure in a secret but intense rebellion of a small coterie of Bush administration lawyers. Their insurrection, described to NEWSWEEK by current and former administration officials who did not wish to be identified discussing confidential deliberations, is one of the most significant and intriguing untold stories of the war on terror.
http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/002551.html
At any rate, I got interested in Goldsmith (who was with Comey during the hospital scene) and wondered what may have inspired him, in addition to his knowledge of the horrendous practical effects of Yoo's memo, or its egregious analysis. It turns out Goldsmith has written a book on Government and the Internet in the interim:
http://www.amazon.com/Who-Controls-Internet-Illusions-Borderless/dp/0195152662
He sounds fairly savvy on the political potential of the intertubes. Perhaps one of the things that changed was getting someone who reads blogs into a position of influence in the OLC?
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OT
Bryan Hayward:
I'm not really clear what you are referring to with your reference to the use of "OT" on other boards. (Maybe I'm using it wrong - I thought it meant "off topic").
That's what I've used it for, too; I haven't seen it used here much, though.
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No Accountability
Glenn,
I read this Blog all the time, well as much as I can and I commend you for the detailed and thought provoking material you write but the accountability you are looking for is gone.
It is not only gone from the MSM but also from all walks of our society. I am a retired Veteran of the USAF and I can tell you even in the Us Military accountability has no place and that is because people only accept leadership positions in this society only as far as that position will propel them up the ladder of seccess.
Going along to get along is all you are going to see until something very dramatic happens in our country to wake us out of this dangerous group think that we have allowed ourse4lves to fall into.
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What a Card
sysprog:
"Go get me Andy Card," Bush said to one of the Secret Service agents. Card, the designee as chief of staff, entered from an adjoining room . . . Bush looked impatiently at Card, hard-eyed. "You're the chief of staff. You think you're up to getting us some cheeseburgers?"
Can you imagine being in such a prestigious position of trust and authority, and treating the people who work for you that way? What an arrogant dick.
OH! Wait a minute, I'd hate to misread him; does Bush have one of those famous "dry" senses of humor?
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Deluded?
Bert94114,
If you think the letter is about the POTUS protecting lives then you are as confused as this white house and the MSM want you to be.
This is not about protecting anyone. It is about and always was about the depths to which these folks will be willing to go to dig up dirt on their enemies, real or imagined to protect their's and their party's ability to hold on to power at all cost.