Mar 1st, 2009 at 6:22 pm
Meet The New Boss
The Obama administration seems just as determined as the Bush administration was to making sure that nobody has any legal recourse if they’ve been subject to illegal surveillance. The process is getting pretty Kafkaesque here; the basic shape of things is that you can’t sue the government over secret illegal surveillance because since the surveillance happened in secret, you can’t prove it happened. And you can’t get the documents that might prove it happened, because that would compromise the secrecy.
Personally, I don’t see any way that could wind up leading to abuses.
51 Responses to “Meet The New Boss”
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March 1st, 2009 at 6:26 pm
Well, Obama has been very disappointing on the spying front ever since he reneged on FISA. I guess we have to settle for a government that doesn’t torture people to death, at least.
I still don’t understand why Obama goes out of his way to protect the Bush administration criminals from prosecution.
March 1st, 2009 at 6:54 pm
I guess we have to settle for a government that doesn’t torture people to death, at least.
How will we know the US Gov. doesn’t torture. It’s a state secret!
I just don’t get it. No explanation from any policy-maker. Just continue as before. What do Obama and team know that makes them behave this way?
It’s more than disgusting. It’s an Obamanation.
March 1st, 2009 at 6:55 pm
I’ve been following at Greenwald’s Salon blog, and I have to say I don’t understand why Obama seems to be continuing Bush policy in these areas. Has Obama said anything publicly to justify or defend these decisions?
March 1st, 2009 at 7:09 pm
I’m going to wait awhile before concluding that Obama=Bush on surveillance. Greenwald’s hysterics are pretty tired at this point. The fact of the matter is there’s much we don’t know.
March 1st, 2009 at 7:10 pm
Pure speculation, but one possible reason for this is that what really went on is much more deep, outrageous, and would implicate far more people than what we already know happened.
March 1st, 2009 at 7:15 pm
The place for all the detail on this is Emptywheel’s blog, complete with court documents, timelines and speculation on the motivations of the administration lawyers, some of whom are Bush DOJ dead-enders.
(Note that the Obama lawyers have just fessed up that a previous filing by Bush lawyers contained “an innacuracy”.)
March 1st, 2009 at 7:54 pm
I agree with lfv. My take is that there may be so much corruption and and rot to be uncovered that when it finally sees the light of day, work on anything else in government will grind to a halt.
March 1st, 2009 at 8:01 pm
Matt offering a serious criticism of the Obama administration? What’s up with that? Is this some kind of cynical attempt to convince us that the old, non-hack Matt is still around? Will Jennifer Palmieri force another retraction? Is the official CAPAF position to be critical of Obama on this issue?
March 1st, 2009 at 8:01 pm
I agree that it’s a shame that Obama doesn’t break more categorically with these abuses, but the way Matthew has phrased it raises an interesting question. Once in a very long while someone gets incontrovertible evidence, almost always through a stupid error by someone in the government, that they’ve been the subject of illegal surveillance. Most people, though, have only a hunch, and sometimes it’s a tendentious hunch: they *want* to be the subject of illegal surveillance, to advance some critique they have of the government. I can see why the government has little desire to prove the negative, which can’t be done, and can only be approached asymptotically by revealing everything about all of its surveillance targets. The Obama administration ought to draw a clear line between the relatively few cases where someone ends up with incontrovertible proof that they’re the victim of illegal surveillance, and the many cases where people just sorta kinda think they were; in the first kind of case the government should fight or fold, according to whether it thinks the surveillance was illegal. But in the second kind of case, there’s nothing wrong with “sorry, nothing to see here!”
March 1st, 2009 at 8:09 pm
Greenwald’s hysterics are pretty tired at this point. The fact of the matter is there’s much we don’t know.
Right. The President knows facts that we don’t, right? He has a secret plan to defeat terrorism! Plus, when he does something, it means it’s not illegal!
The point is that there isn’t supposed to be “much we don’t know” about how we’re treating terror suspects, “enemy combatants,” American citizens, etc. The process is supposed to be transparent. And when the President continues to work against civil liberties, it’s not the time to assume the best, no matter how “tired” you are of asking questions.
March 1st, 2009 at 8:15 pm
Rich in PA,
Actually, what the Obama administration is doing falls exactly under your first category. Some people actually have proof that they were spied upon, given to them inadvertently by the Bush administration (because they were as incompetent as criminal). So the government broke the law, everybody knows it, yet Obama invokes national security to protect Bush and his lackeys.
And yeah, someone should explain why. Actually no, there is no good reason. Someone in this new administration should realize a clean break is better than this mess.
March 1st, 2009 at 8:22 pm
In fairness to the Democrats, they had a major section in the Stimulus bill adding new protections and rights for whistleblowers in the intelligence community. Republican Senator Collins of Maine insisted that it be stripped out as the price of getting her vote.
Then she went through a song and dance re how she wasn’t really opposed to the protections — she just thought it should be done with the deliberation of the committee process.
Yeah, right. Check back with her this time next year and see if any progress at all has been made.
According to the Bill of Rights, US citizens are supposed to have the right to petition their Members of Congress for redress of grievances. Yet the Republican Congress of 1998 passed the Orwellian-named “Intelligence Whistleblowers Protection Act” which did the opposite of its title: Require whistleblowers to inform the Executive Branch 30 days in advance that they intend to snitch on the Executive Branch to Congress. A nice way to doom your family to poverty.
The Republican Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Porter Goss , proposed and passed the above bill. Mr Goss was also a co-sponsor of the Patriot Act.
Mr Goss was a former officer in the CIA (during the Bay of Pigs, heh heh) and in 2004 became George W Bush’s Director of the CIA — an event which must have amused his old buddies in Operation 40:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_40
Maybe we should ask Porter Goss’s Director of Staff on HPSCI why Porter didn’t give more protection to Intelligence Whistleblowers back in 1998.
Oh — I forgot. We can’t:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B00E6DB173FF935A35755C0A9669C8B63&n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/Subjects/D/Deaths%20(Obituaries)&scp=3&sq=John%20Millis&st=cse
March 1st, 2009 at 8:28 pm
Also, there is perhaps no polite or gentle way to say this, but, Matt, the phrase “Meet The New Boss” is starting to seem a bit tired.
March 1st, 2009 at 8:29 pm
The military sold cameras at Abu Ghraib.
So it goes.
March 1st, 2009 at 9:33 pm
Troubling signs, but still too early to tell if this is indicative of the Obama administration’s outlook, or if the lower levels of the Justice Department are just being left on auto-pilot for the time being.
Time will tell.
March 1st, 2009 at 9:51 pm
Maybe the Obama administration is discovering that some of the things the Bush administration did… kind of make sense. And that there were some tough choices to be made. And that making them can make you look bad.
I mean, you COULD do something like toss close Gitmo tomorrow. Which might make people feel warm and friendly. But one of those dudes gets out and straps a bomb to himself and kills a bunch of Marines… bye bye political capital. By bye high speed rail. Bye bye universal health care.
So I am with DTM. Seems like moving slowly is not only the right thing to do, but also the smartest move politically. And odds are, the administration will discover that one or two of the Bush-era policies that drove progressives nuts are, actually, good policies. Or least bad.
March 1st, 2009 at 9:52 pm
Matt offering a serious criticism of the Obama administration? What’s up with that? Is this some kind of cynical attempt to convince us that the old, non-hack Matt is still around?
So, MY not being a hack is an excuse for you to bash him for being a hack? What motivates someone to make such a fucking jackass comment? Really, what? Being honestly partisan is not the same thing as being a hack (i.e. I don’t think MY is a hack), but comments like yours belong in an even lower-grade realm than hack-dom, since even hacks are not, strictly speaking, pointless.
Obama is taking some bad advice here, and not for the first time. Maybe they are buying time, punting. But it stinks – a lot.
March 1st, 2009 at 10:05 pm
But the Occam’s Razor explanation is that Obama and Holder aren’t sure what to do with the legal mess they got handed.
Sure they are: they have decided to cover it up. They’re not punting or waiting for more information, they’re actually trying to kill the case. Let’s be honest here. If they succeed in court, that’s the end of it.
March 1st, 2009 at 10:14 pm
I mean, you COULD do something like toss close Gitmo tomorrow. Which might make people feel warm and friendly. But one of those dudes gets out and straps a bomb to himself and kills a bunch of Marines… bye bye political capital. By bye high speed rail. Bye bye universal health care.
Just FYI: if someone ever asks me what a “concern troll” is, I’m going to offer the above paragraph as an example.
March 1st, 2009 at 10:18 pm
Obama and his team of spooks are simply less aggressive Bushies. They all want the same things and are open to the same illegal tactics. They could get impeached for this just as Bush should have been.
All of our presidents should be/have been in jail.
http://www.sunstateactivist.org/ssablog/
March 1st, 2009 at 10:19 pm
Occam’s Razor, as we all learned in school, states that the simplest explanation for anything is that Obama knows what he’s doing and we should all trust him.
March 1st, 2009 at 10:27 pm
I can understand the Obama administration’s desire, or any president’s desire, to keep the discovery process in civil court from being used to blow intelligence secrets. Using the discovery process in open court to talk about covert operations raises some legitimate, rather thorny legal questions.
Ever hear of “bad cases make bad law?” The Bush administration spies on a whole lot of innocent people, illegally. Then, when they get sued, they screw up and fax over a bunch of classified materials to the plaintiffs. Oh, and these aren’t just ANY classified materials. No, these particular classified materials, which would serve to publicize any number of sources and methods, just happen to be directly relevant to the plaintiff’s case against the government.
Wonderful. Thanks, George. Thanks, Gonzo. Thanks, Dick. This is going to turn out just great.
March 1st, 2009 at 10:37 pm
joe from Lowell,
The “discovery process” in question was highly illegal. And the “covert operations” were spying without a warrant on two American lawyers. Do you really understand any president’s desire to break the law?
March 1st, 2009 at 10:45 pm
Why oh why,
Do you know what “discovery process” means?
I don’t think the plaintiff’s pursuit of evidence and efforts to bring it into the court were highly illegal.
March 1st, 2009 at 10:54 pm
Do I understand the president’s desire to break the law? I think I understand George Bush’s desire to break the law. He wanted to spy out information about plots, and didn’t think it was terribly important for him to follow the laws about wiretapping, warrants, civil liberties, and constitutional protection.
That’s the only example of the president desiring to break the law here. We’re just discussting the lawsuit about that lawbreaking.
March 1st, 2009 at 11:06 pm
My bad about the “discovery process”. I took one class in Law and hated it, so there you go.
My point about those supposedly super-secret “covert operations” still stands. Not only were they super-illegal, but not much about them is still secret. Why is Obama defending them?
March 2nd, 2009 at 12:15 am
“if someone ever asks me what a ‘concern troll’ is, I’m going to offer the above paragraph as an example.”
That’s great news for sure. But honestly, what are the odds anyone would ever ask you for such a definition? Do people regularly seek your knowledge in this regard? On the off chance they do, though, it’s good to hear you are prepared. Do cut and paste it into a file though, for quick access. We wouldn’t want your eager minions to be left wanting.
March 2nd, 2009 at 12:31 am
I agree, Y.o.Y., the spying looks completely illegal. No warrants, no apparent cause – this little operation from the Bush era stinks to high heaven.
Why is Obama defending them?
The administration is arguing a point about constitutional law, about the limits of executive power; that it’s this crappy case with these facts and this judicial history is just the hand they were dealt. The executive is pushing back against the other branches.
I hope he ends up doing this a lot less than his predecessor, because the executive has been awfully pushy lately. I hope the internal procedures they cook up to deal with this little mosque-tapping fiasco pass muster with the Supreme Court.
March 2nd, 2009 at 2:29 am
Kafka never gets the credit he deserves. We talk about Orwell until the cows come home, but we can barely speak a sentence about Kafka. Kafka predicted our modern judicial system a long time ago. He deserves credit for that. Granted, he didn’t intend his writings to be predictions, he only dealt with the surreal. But the surreal is real now, so let’s name a court building after Kafka. Nobody else ever explained how our legal system would work.
In the end, it doesn’t matter to me. The Feds are already monitoring me, and they always will. My bank accounts have more flags on them than than the UN building. I get frozen more often than a Siberian mailman. It’s the rest of you who have to worry. And if they want to throw me in jail, they need to find a new one. The jails near me are already tired of seeing my face. And so are the judges. So monitor my bank accounts, listen to my phone calls, read my emails, look at my medical records. Whatever. You’ve been watching me for years, and I’m paying for it. When you get something on me, I’m sure you’ll show up at my door to tell me about it. And whatever you get will surely be news to me. Until then, you’ll just waste my money.
March 2nd, 2009 at 5:12 am
Hmmm.. What do I usually say in these cases where Obama makes it clear he’s “Bush Lite”?
Suckers.
March 2nd, 2009 at 5:52 am
Pay no attention to the Bushit behind the curtain.
March 2nd, 2009 at 7:19 am
This also works for throwing someone in jail and tossing the key into the sea.
“Is Amir in jail?”
“Amir, who is this Amir you speak of?”
“He’s my brother. He was picked up by the FBI this morning, I saw them drive away in a black SUV.”
“Hmmm, don’t know the guy. If I did I wouldn’t admit it to you. If we picked him up I wouldn’t admit that either. Whatever has or hasn’t happened to him is nevetheless a state secret. Good day.”
March 2nd, 2009 at 8:46 am
I guess we have to settle for a government that doesn’t torture people to death, at least.
Except that Obama is doubling the size of the prison at Bagram Air Base, where, you know, we torture people to death.
March 2nd, 2009 at 9:45 am
To me, the problem here isn’t that the government spies on its citizens. I mean, really, if you think this never happened before Bush, I’ve got some news for you. It was just something they regularly lie their asses off about and laugh at us when we believe them. But that’s another set of stories.
The government spies on whoever it wants, whenever it wants, however it wants, and it has been ever thus. Obama “reversing” himself on FISA got a lot of people’s knickers in a twist, but not mine, really. Its a more honest stance, if you ask me, to admit that you lie rather than to lie about your lying. If that makes any sense.
What people seem to not get here, is that the mere existence of a FISA court in the first place was ALREADY a massive affront to our rights, and a glaring signal itself indicative of our complete and total lack of privacy and lack of respect for one another as a society. There was never, ever, in the history of the country, any need whatsoever for a ’special’ extra court to evaluate the need to wiretap / etc domestic citizens of the country in secret with no recourse to the results of its rulings available. Never necessary in the first place. The fact that there is now or ever was a FISA court simply means that you have no right to not be monitored by the government.
Of course this is something that is not at all popular with people, which is why there’s so much effort to obscure it and reassure people that ‘we’re not a police state’ or ‘we’re not Singapore’ or what have you. BS. We’re worse, by several orders of magnitude, but not as bad as the UK. Yet.
I’m disappointed too, I had kinda held out hope that Obama would attempt some stealth maneuvers on this one, but I wasn’t holding my breath either. Again, at least he’ll admit what he’s up to, unlike the putrescence of the Bush administration.
March 2nd, 2009 at 9:46 am
Torture didn’t magically start happening at Bagram because it’s haunted or something; it happened because it was the policy of the previous administration.
March 2nd, 2009 at 10:12 am
From http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D96LUS100&show_article=1
——–
AP Newsbreak: CIA destroyed 92 interrogation tapes
Mar 2 09:32 AM US/Eastern
By DEVLIN BARRETT
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) – New documents show the CIA destroyed nearly 100 tapes of terror interrogations.
The figure is far higher than the handful of recordings the agency has previously admitted destroying, and the revelation comes as a criminal prosecutor is wrapping up his investigation in the matter.
The acknowledgment of dozens of destroyed tapes came in a letter filed by government lawyers in New York, where the American Civil Liberties Union has filed a lawsuit seeking more details of terror interrogation programs.
The tapes became a contentious issue in the trial of Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, after prosecutors initially claimed no such recordings existed, then acknowledged two videotapes and one audiotape had been made. ”
———–
Why would the CIA destroy tapes of people sitting around and asking questions?
I mean, these interrogations are just question and answer session like on Meet the Press, no?
March 2nd, 2009 at 11:27 am
You, sir, have just won the internet.
In response to other posters’ plaintive cri de couer to the effect that “we don’t know why Obama is doing this”, I would respond: yes we do. He’s doing it because he is President, because he wants the authority to detain people at will, to conduct “enhanced interrogations”, to eavesdrop without a warrant, etc. The only way he will not do these things is if he is forced not to do them, which (as we saw during the campaign when progressives still voted for Obama after the FISA retroactive-immunity debacle) is not going to happen. So, welcome to the new American equilibrium, folks — you’ve earned it.
March 2nd, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Congratulations, Jake (#4), you made Greenwald.
March 2nd, 2009 at 12:19 pm
“Wait and see” is a plaintive cri du coeur.
“Oh my God, Obama is just like Bush, and I know everything that’s going on,” on the other hand, is just hard-headed common sense.
Uh huh.
March 2nd, 2009 at 12:28 pm
Joe, what exactly do we have to “wait and see” before assessing the merits of the administration’s arguments? In particular, what does a Constitutional lawyer have to “wait and see” before giving his opinion?
I also don’t believe that you think “Oh my God, Obama is just like Bush, and I know everything that’s going on” is an accurate paraphrase of Greenwald, or at least I hope not.
March 2nd, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Ignore the second part of my comment—I see that you were responding to stillnotking, not Greenwald. My first point stands, though; are we suddenly not allowed to judge legal arguments on their merits?
March 2nd, 2009 at 12:45 pm
In particular, what does a Constitutional lawyer have to “wait and see” before giving his opinion?
His opinion about what? This individual filing? In that case, he doesn’t have to “wait and see,” because he has everything he needs to opine about this one particular filing. If Greenwald (and others) had limited their commentary to their thoughts on this one filing in this one case, they’d be on much more solid ground.
The administration’s position on classified information in general? In that case, we need to wait and see what the administration does going forward. In particular, we need to wait and see how it handles classified information, and how it responds to new cases that come up, and even how it operated in the future in regards to existing cases. We’re still just a month into the term, this case is still being argued by Bush administration holdovers, and we don’t know to what extent this represents “auto-pilot.”
Ditto with the administration’s attitude towards executive power in a general sense.
I also don’t believe that you think “Oh my God, Obama is just like Bush, and I know everything that’s going on” is an accurate paraphrase of Greenwald, or at least I hope not. Not Greenwald personally – he’s actually gone out of his way on a number of occasions that he does not endorse the “Meet the New Boss…” view, but considers Obama to be significantly better than Bush. There are, however, plenty of people, operating with various motives and assumptions, who don’t bother to weigh the issues as finely as Greenwald himself.
March 2nd, 2009 at 12:53 pm
No, “wait and see” is just silliness when one already has seen. “I still don’t understand why Obama goes out of his way to protect the Bush administration criminals from prosecution” is a cri de couer — and it’s beyond naive for anyone to pretend they literally don’t know why Obama is doing what he’s doing.
Bottom line: why extend this bizarre presumption of good faith to Obama when no such presumption was extended to Bush? They’re occupying the same office and doing the same things, right down to Obama’s DOJ literally affirming Bush DOJ arguments in every particular.
March 2nd, 2009 at 4:18 pm
It took years before people started assuming bad faith on the part of Bush.
March 2nd, 2009 at 4:19 pm
So let me get this straight: this filing means that only a naif – on prone to engaging in cries du coeur, no less – would be unconvinced by the “Obama = Bush” argument.
Meanwhile, the decision to try al-Masri in civilian court means nothing.
OK. Just as long as you aren’t cherry-picking, or being hysterical.
March 2nd, 2009 at 8:10 pm
quote from the article:
” Hours later, President Obama’s Justice Department filed papers that appeared to defy the judge’s order to allow lawyers for an Islamic organization to see a classified surveillance document at the heart of the case”
So what’s this “appeared to”? Obviously we don’t know. But we are supposed to assume the worst?
Also what are “Obama’s judges”? Obama hasn’t had the time to get rid of Bush’s judges. It’s the same with the recent KKR judgment in favor of thier corruption.
The rightwingers agree with you that these are “Obama’s” lawyers. But obviously they are Bush’s.
March 2nd, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Marcia, are you suggesting that maybe the documents that Obama filed only seemed to defy the judge’s orders, but actually did the opposite? That paper needs to get better legal experts, if so.
And are you also suggesting that the Department of Justice is composed of loyal Bushies who still believe they’re working for 43, and that they’re filing briefs against Obama’s wishes? When does Obama get inaugurated, anyway? I’m getting impatient.
March 3rd, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Not to worry. I imagine the purge of those treacherous Bush DOJ lawyers will be finished in about seven years and eight months.
I expected all this to happen, right down to the ludicrously strained progressive defensiveness, but somehow I’m still disappointed. Ah well.
March 5th, 2009 at 12:46 pm
Gute Arbeit hier! Gute Inhalte.