Daniel Ellsberg looks back and forward

Interesting interview of Daniel Ellsberg appearing in a PBS Series titled POV. This quote's a gem:

In this interview, Ellsberg says, "Richard Nixon, if he were alive today, would feel vindicated that all the crimes he committed against me–which forced his resignation facing impeachment–are now legal. " (Thanks to the Patriot Act and other laws passed in recent years.) And he says all presidents since Nixon have violated the constitution, most recently President Obama, with the bombing of Libya.

Continue ReadingDaniel Ellsberg looks back and forward

United States Citizen Consent Form and Survey

I suspect that only a smallish minority of people deeply care about the many dramatic political and legal changes that have been occurring in the United States over the past ten years. Just to make sure, though, I have created a United States Citizen Consent Form and Survey, and I would like to propose that it be distributed to all U.S. citizens and they be compelled to fill it out by federal mandate.

Maybe the results will substantiate my fears that I am an outsider living in what used to be my own country.

Continue ReadingUnited States Citizen Consent Form and Survey

Barack Obama: The Surveillance President

Glenn Greenwald points to three extraordinary events this week that earn Barack Obama the title of Surveillance President. These events dovetail with the President's previous conduct aimed at furthering government secrecy at the expense of an informed citizenry. These events also need to be seen in the context of Obama's War on whistleblowers, as reported by Jane Mayer of The New Yorker.  "[T]he Obama Administration has pursued leak prosecutions with a surprising relentlessness. . . . [I]t has been using the Espionage Act to press criminal charges in five alleged instances of national-security leaks—more such prosecutions than have occurred in all previous Administrations combined."  But that is just the beginning.  Here's one more excerpt from The New Yorker:

Jack Balkin, a liberal law professor at Yale, agrees that the increase in leak prosecutions is part of a larger transformation. “We are witnessing the bipartisan normalization and legitimization of a national-surveillance state,” he says. In his view, zealous leak prosecutions are consonant with other political shifts since 9/11: the emergence of a vast new security bureaucracy, in which at least two and a half million people hold confidential, secret, or top-secret clearances; huge expenditures on electronic monitoring, along with a reinterpretation of the law in order to sanction it; and corporate partnerships with the government that have transformed the counterterrorism industry into a powerful lobbying force. Obama, Balkin says, has “systematically adopted policies consistent with the second term of the Bush Administration.”

[caption id="attachment_18134" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Image by Kgtoh at Dreamstime (with permission)"][/caption] But back to the three recent events: 1. Top congressional leaders agreed Thursday to a four-year extension of the Patriot Act; 2. The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual's Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation; and 3. The nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation alleges in a lawsuit filed Thursday that the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel violated federal open-records laws by refusing to release its legal opinion that concludes that the FBI may obtain telephone records of international calls made from the U.S. without any formal legal process, a watchdog group asserts. Welcome to the United States of Surveillance.

Continue ReadingBarack Obama: The Surveillance President

Political boundaries

On my way home tonight, I listened to NPR’s Andrea Seabrook talk about “Politicians And Their Wives: What's Fair Game?” I recalled a political science class from the early 1980s and a professor who was examining the dignity of the office of Presidency…and how it was eroding. He related how when FDR got out of a vehicle, the media would turn their heads, examine their nails, look up at the birds, point their cameras away until he got in his chair and covered his legs. Regardless of the words, accusations, criticisms in print, the visual privacy – and dignity - was preserved. I also recalled the (comical to me at the time) formal morning coat of the 1981 inauguration, as Reagan wanted to restore the dignity that supposedly was lost when Carter walked the parade route and had a “People’s Inauguration.” I imagine the professor mentioned above would have been appalled at the television coverage of Reagan’s colon polyps a few years later and probably outraged at the media of today. So what changed? [More . . . ]

Continue ReadingPolitical boundaries

After ruining his career, U.S. DOJ drops charges against whistleblower

In 2004, Thomas Tamm decided to expose the Bush administration’s domestic warrantless eavesdropping program that intercepted private email messages and phone calls of U.S. residents without a court warrant. He paid a high price for making this illegal program public, and now the federal investigation against him has been quietly dropped. This latest development has been covered by Juan Gonzalez and Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, and includes an interview of Mr. Tamm:

JUAN GONZALEZ: We turn now to an update on the whistleblower who helped expose the Bush administration’s warrantless domestic eavesdropping program. He made what’s been called the biggest leak of the Bush era.

In 2004, Justice Department attorney Thomas Tamm called the New York Times and told them about the National Security Agency’s secret program to intercept private email messages and phone calls of U.S. residents without a court warrant. Based in part on his tip, the Times went on to expose what many believe was a highly illegal program. The Times even won a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting. Meanwhile, Thomas Tamm lost his job. The FBI raided his house and began monitoring his phone calls and email. Up until this week, he faced possible arrest for disclosing classified secrets.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, on Tuesday, Politico broke the news that the Justice Department has dropped its longstanding criminal investigation of Tamm. Asked to comment on the story, Attorney General Eric Holder told reporters, quote, "These matters get reviewed by career lawyers in the department. They look at these matters in an exhaustive fashion and reach what I think are appropriate conclusions."

The relatively quiet end to the investigation into Tamm’s warrantless wiretapping leak marks a sharp contrast to the controversy his tip generated during the second half of the Bush administration about whether the government had overstepped its legal authority in response to the 9/11 terror attacks.

Thomas Tamm joins us now from Washington, D.C. We welcome you back to the program.

THOMAS TAMM: Thank you for inviting me.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, talk about what this means and what this investigation, your ouster from the Justice Department, what all of this has meant for your life over the past five years.

THOMAS TAMM: Well, I mean, it’s a relief that the long ordeal is over. Unfortunately, I ruined my career. I had loved working at the Justice Department, particularly in the Criminal Division. It was an honor to represent the people of the United States. As a result of that, I incurred significant legal fees, which I still owe. I borrowed money for those legal fees. And, you know, really, probably the biggest impact was on my family. I wasn’t home when the 18 FBI agents rammed through my house, but my wife was, and my kids were. My kids were awakened in their beds by strangers wearing guns. And I don’t think that they will ever get over that. My wife doesn’t feel the same way about our house, doesn’t feel as safe in our house.

AMY GOODMAN: Could you go back, just chronologically take us through this? Your case did not get a tremendous amount of attention, certainly through the years. So talk about what you found out when you were working in the Justice Department, when you made that phone call to the Times, and how this raid took place. But start at the beginning.

THOMAS TAMM: Well, it really kind of started with me after 9/11. In the Criminal Division, we had the opportunity to talk to the families of the 9/11 attack, and I decided that I wanted to try and go after the real bad guys, the people that had attacked our country. And so, I went to this office where you were—where we did legal wiretapping and electronic surveillance, approved by a court, to try and gain intelligence about foreign agents. I was there only a short period of time. It was right at the start of the Iraq war, and fear permeated that office. And it was—I think for the first time I understood what fear, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself," actually meant.

And as I participated in that, I realized that there was a separate track of cases, about 10 percent of the cases, that did not go through the normal process, that went to just one particular judge. And only the Attorney General could sign those warrants, which was different from all of the other cases that I handled. And I remember a lawyer that was senior to me saying that she didn’t want to know what this program was. She just assumed it was illegal. And so, I just started—it was kind of an educated guess.

And, you know, it’s interesting to say that I made a phone call to the New York Times. Actually, it was a series of phone calls before I became comfortable even talking to them, and then it was a series of meetings, during which I said, "I think that there’s something illegal going on. I’m not sure what it is." [More . . . ]

Continue ReadingAfter ruining his career, U.S. DOJ drops charges against whistleblower