Ex-White House Lawyer Speaks of ‘Legal Mess’ of Illegal Spying
A former top lawyer for the Bush administration on Tuesday said that parts of the President Bush’s much-criticized eavesdropping program were illegal.
There were aspects of the Terrorist Surveillance Program “that I could not find the legal support for,” Jack Goldsmith, the former head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, told the Senate Judiciary Committee.
But he would not say exactly what law or constitutional principle the surveillance violated. Goldsmith said the White House has forbidden him from saying anything about the legal analysis underpinning the program - key details long sought by majority Democrats and some Republicans.
As the Justice Department’s top legal adviser to the White House from 2003 to 2004, Goldsmith was in charge of writing formal legal opinions and interpretations for the executive branch.
The legal rationale for the program is so secretive it initially was not even shared with top officials, including the general counsel of the National Security Agency, which conducted the surveillance.
Then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey also was not “read into,” or advised about, the TSP program, despite his role in implementing the warrantless surveillance. As deputy, Comey would have been responsible for approving warrantless surveillance requests when the attorney general was not available.
Goldsmith said he assumes that the White House does not want the legality of the TSP program scrutinized, and he said “the extreme secrecy - not getting feedback from experts, not showing it to experts - led to a lot of mistakes.”
The legal justification for the eavesdropping program has been a central point of a standoff between the White House and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy. The Vermont Democrat has said he wants certain information about the administration’s surveillance and interrogation methods before he will schedule confirmation hearings for Michael Mukasey, Bush’s choice for attorney general.
Key to the debate is a March 2004 showdown at the hospital bedside of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft as he recovered from gall bladder surgery.
Goldsmith, who was in the room, confirmed Comey’s earlier account that a physically weak Ashcroft rebuffed White House officials who were trying to get him to reauthorize the eavesdropping program. According to Goldsmith, Ashcroft said he believed the program was illegal.
Goldsmith also confirmed he was among Justice Department lawyers who threatened to resign after the hospital stand off because of the White House’s attempt to get around the Justice Department’s opinion of the program. The threat of a mass walkout ultimately convinced the White House to adjust the program.
In his testimony, Goldsmith also contradicted former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who told the committee earlier this year there was no dissent in the administration about legality of the program.
Between 2001 and 2007, the U.S. government eavesdropped on an undisclosed number of people and entities in the United States without approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. That court was created 30 years ago to oversee surveillance activities inside the country after Congress learned the government had been secretly eavesdropping on Americans for decades, in some cases for political gain.
The FISA court is meant to balance the government’s need to periodically collect intelligence inside the United States and the U.S. public’s right to privacy. Secret FISA court orders can compel telecommunications companies to cooperate with government surveillance requests and indemnify them from lawsuits.
The Bush administration has asked Congress to grant retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated. Around 40 lawsuits related to the surveillance are pending in federal courts. The administration has refused to give Congress details on the companies’ involvement.
On Tuesday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee went to the companies themselves, asking AT&T, Verizon and Qwest for details on the government’s secret surveillance program.
Of the three, reportedly only Qwest rebuffed the government, insisting on a FISA court order first.The law prohibits telecommunications companies from sharing customer records without a court order.
The committee asked in letters sent Tuesday whether the companies allowed government agencies to install equipment on telecommunications lines to copy private Internet traffic, whether they have provided information on customers’ networks of associates to the FBI, and whether they have ever been offered legal indemnity or compensation for cooperating with surveillance requests.
© 2007 The Associated Press
QUOTE: But he would not say exactly what law or constitutional principle the surveillance violated. Goldsmith said the White House has forbidden him from saying anything about the legal analysis underpinning the program - key details long sought by majority Democrats and some Republicans.UNQUOTE
Jack Goldsmith was being paid by the taxpayers and all information should be available to the Congress.
Goldsmith is not in Bush’s personal employ –
Someone should straighten this out right away.
Who was the person saying Windows Vista allows the government to see everything on your computer, including your mouse clicks…Not that I don’t believe they can’t already do that.
Scary. The next thing, if they haven’t thought of it already, is spying cameras built into every TV, computer monitor… like in 1984.
Don’t think it can’t happen. As we’ve learned with PC’s it’s already begun.
Don’t think of your cell phone being next to your bed a night! Mouse clicks and all that are visible and have been for a long time. Its just proprietary now. It was temporary before, or erasable I should say. Your cell communicates while fully off. There is a setting, on some phones, that allows you, NOT, to be in full communication all the time with the comm. towers and triangulated every step. See the current Seattle times article about the lost lady from Enumclaw. How often does your cell just blink on while sitting on your table with out being touched? Every hour? Just a quick photo? Who knows? Yes, I’m just talking paranoid, but, its in the software. Who wrote it? I’ll bet some Israeli owned company. They write it all for us. Smart folks!
Look, I know alot of people hate israel but I really don’t. I would rather embrace the people and have them all as my neighbor. Their plan to be around Jerusalem has caused a lot of problems in the area and I think it needs to be re-thunk. The communications technology that the US uses almost solely comes from Israel and its companies. With that in mind why doesn’t the US open it borders to all of Israel and replace them all here? I know its a big move, but our governments get along well and the people are great and well educated. I think its a win/win proposition. We get a stronger infrastructure and Israel could be then the size of the US and Jesus could be born again! See, everyone would be happy! No war in the mid east unless its Taliban and Jesus by our side!
I just had to say it due to the overwhelming evidence that israel is being bad right now and yes I’m upset but it doesn’t mean I’m anti jewish or anything. I hate all governments that abuse power. Its never the people. People are people, dumb or smart, they all have a place, just where? NOT in a public office I would presume.
hey mastershake October 3rd, 2007 12:14 pm
GO TO:
http://badvista.fsf.org/what-s-wrong-with-microsoft-windows-vista
Vista is bad news for many reasons
Our Big Brother is here.
A former top lawyer for the Bush administration on Tuesday said that parts of the President Bush’s much-criticized eavesdropping program were illegal.
Well, duh. Why didn’t he speak up while it mattered? Coward.
All of the prior illegality is water under the bridge.
Remember Congress passed legislation earlier this year making such conduct LEGAL.
A prediction: Goldsmith will soon join Murphy on the ‘don’t fly lists’:
We’ve already had the person who was acting Attorney General at the time state in oath under testimony to a Senate committee that this was illegal.
Anything on top of that it overkill. If we lived in a country where the rule of law matter, that one statement under oath would have started an impeachment process. This is just more confirmation that Bush was acting illegally, and we already know this is fully endorsed and approved by the Democrats. They won’t move to impeach, and they will vote to make it retroactively legal.
Legal opinion that is secret, is like having your invisible friends to your birthday party.
“Of the three, reportedly only Qwest rebuffed the government, insisting on a FISA court order first.The law prohibits telecommunications companies from sharing customer records without a court order.”
The law also prohibits telecommunications companies from wiretapping U.S. Citizens without permission from FISA. Why is it that all of a sudden Quest needs a court order from FISA? Why didn’t they feel they needed a court order from FISA when they agreed to illegally wiretap the citizens of this country?
How patrtiotic of Quest to give our Congress the middle finger after they’ve broken law. Meanwhile, our “pigmy” Congress continues to allow this administration to turn our legislative body into a spectacle of weak, ideological misfits who don’t have the guts to exercise their constitutional powers to protect the liberties and freedoms of their constituents under the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Maybe it’s time we ask ourselves who the false patriots are in this ever weakening Democracy we live in.
While it is a fact that Bush and his cronies are criminals, it is also a fact illegal wiretaps have been common practice since the time of J. Edgar Hoover. To believe this is untrue is akin to believing in the tooth fairy. Local police task forces as well as national government agencies are routinely involved in tapping phones without a warrant. The information cannot be used in court, but it can be, and is used to track, infiltrate, and facilitate. The only changes being the scale and sophistication. The same can be said on the international level which now includes virtually all communications involving a foreign destination or origin. It can as well be assumed that internet communications have been intercepted from its inception, just as this site is without doubt under the surveillance of DOJ, NSA, DOD, CIA, FBI, DHS, etc… This communication, which originates form a foreign country, is being eyed by big brother and net nanny.
As for the Bush administrations request that Ashcroft reauthorize the illegal eavesdropping program, it was nothing more than a feeble attempt by the administration to cover its ass.
What will come of all this illegal activity, probably nothing at all.