March 5, 2008 at 02:25:08

Better Buckle Up! -- CheneyBush's Final 10 Months

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By Bernard Weiner (about the author) Page 2 of 3 page(s)

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2. WHO WATCHES THE WATCHERS?

The CheneyBush Administration is probably the most secretive in U.S. history. It doesn't like anybody looking over its shoulder and knowing what it's up to, mainly because so much of what it's up to is either immoral, illegal or the result of massive corruption, often all three at the same time.

CheneyBush have been especially secretive about the many and various ways they've mangled and decimated the Constitution, especially in how the massive intelligence-gathering techniques available to it have been marshalled to data-mine and spy on American citizens. New technologies have enabled federal agents to secretly enter citizens' computers, read their personal email, tap their telephones, etc., without those victimized ever knowing. Such privacy violations are done, of course, in the name of "fighting the war on terrorism."

Just like authoritarian governments all over the globe, the CheneyBush regime keeps its illegal operations top-secret, and fights like the devil to keep them that way. One way they do this is to make sure nobody -- no court, no congressional committee, and certainly not the public -- is privy to their shadowy operations. To have total control of the inflow of information, they had to figure a way to avoid the post-Nixon law establishing the FISA Court as the one legal entity for oversight of all Executive requests for wiretapping and the like.

Even though the FISA court has been a virtual rubber-stamp for whatever Bush&Co. choose to do, CheneyBush don't want to be compelled to seek official "permission" to listen in on phone calls of American citizens. But they especially don't want to admit that the President can be reined in by any other institution. And so, shortly after CheneyBush took office, but before 9/11, on their own order they had the NSA begin massive wiretapping and eavesdropping. After 9/11, they asserted an even greater desire to have all intelligence in their hands, always using the "national security" excuse, and, in effect, maneuvered the FISA court out of any meaningful say in their intel-mining programs.

But one final institutional outlet needed to be made toothless. It's called the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), established in 1993, which had the power to question the legal authority of intel decisions made by the Administration. By executive order last week, it has been renamed (taking the word "foreign" out of its title) and its most important committee, the Intelligence Oversight Board (IOB), was effectively stripped of its oversight responsibilities. Most notably removed was the requirement that abuses of executive power "shall be reported" to the Attorney General and that investigations can be carried out by the IOB to determine how bad the situation is. The IOB now merely reports to the Director of National Intelligence.

Here's the sum-up, as explained by Daily Kos' Sminthius: (www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/3/1/112537/4829/221/466600 ) "The Bush administration is engaged in an epic struggle with Congress to keep its illegal domestic intelligence activities secret. That is what the battle over the FISA bill is all about. The last thing Bush, Cheney, and Addington would wish to do would be to leave the IOB in a position to start investigating or exposing that illegality -- now, or in a future administration."

What are CheneyBush hiding in their all-encompassing intel-mining of U.S. citizens? It could involve listening in on their political enemies, or it could be something huge in the works (an attack on Iran?) that they feel would require a nationwide clampdown on intel collection and dissemination. Stay tuned.

3. TRUE CONTEMPT OF CONGRESS

Another way of avoiding scrutiny and oversight is to ignore and neuter the other branches of government. Given how many HardRight judges they've appointed, CheneyBush more or less can count on getting their questionable actions approved by the appellate courts and even by the Supreme Court. In addition, they control the Department of Justice through the ideological toadies they appointed as Attorney General, most notably Alberto Gonzales and now Michael Mukasey.

Recently, the House voted to hold two key Administration figures (White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolton and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers) in contempt of Congress for their failure to honor a subpoena by the House Judiciary Committee requiring their testimony and relevant documents relating to the matter of the fired U.S. Attorneys. They were informed by the committee that they could assert a claim of "executive privilege" as a justification for not answering questions and not providing the documents, but they had to do that by appearing and making that claim in front of the committee. They were not simply free to ignore a lawful subpoena to appear. In short, nobody was above the law.

The committee gave the Administration all sorts of extended deadlines and opportunities to comply, but all they got back was silence from the White House. CheneyBush didn't want their aides to appear and so they didn't; for them to appear, in this twisted theory of governance, would be to acknowledge the validity of Congressional oversight and the separation of powers under which the U.S. has operated for more than 225 years.

Congress can not challenge the authority of the President, this White House reasoning essentially is: "We will not submit to your requests or demands or subpoenas, so go stuff yourself." (Of course, it's easier to strike this tough-guy 'tude when you know that the Democrats in charge of Congress have taken impeachment "off the table.")

Eventually, the House leadership had had enough and Miers and Bolton were cited for contempt, which could earn them jail time. But the citation is meaningless unless it can be enforced and guess who is in charge of referring those contempt citations to a grand jury for possible indictments? Right, Michael Mukasey, CheneyBush's handpicked lackey as Attorney General. And, sure enogh, Mukasey refused to refer.

Democratic Senators Dianne Feinstein and Charles Schumer voted to confirm Mukasey because, they said, he promised to be an objective independent AG. It didn't take long, as was demonstrated last week, to figure out that Mukasey, like Gonzales, is little more than a trained poodle willingly and energetically doing the White House bidding whenever called upon to protect Cheney and Bush from possible legal problems.

And, even if Muksasey had sent the contempt citations to the criminal court, the U.S. Attorney for the D.C. District, Jeffrey Taylor, would have to sign the request in order for criminal indictments to be delivered. Taylor is another made man, one of Bush&Co.'s handpicked U.S. Attorneys, and he's made clear that he would not enforce Congress' contempt citations against Administration officials.

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Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked for two decades as a writer-editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers (more...)

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