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Their concern is well founded. Evidence already on the public record shows that the first three listed, Michael Hayden, Porter Goss, and George Tenet could readily be indicted for crimes under U.S. and international law, including:
--Illegal eavesdropping by the National Security Agency (Hayden was NSA director when he ordered his employees to violate the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires warrants from a special court before electronic eavesdropping is undertaken.)
--Assassination planning without notification to Congress (Goss, whose uncommonly abrupt departure in May 2006 was never looked into by the Fawning Corporate Media [FCM]); and
--Tenet's long list of substantive, as well as operational misdeeds carried out for the President and Cheney. ( "Slam-dunk Tenet turned out to be right about at least one thing "that "things could blow up. )
The Other "Distinguished Signatories
John Deutch: Arrogant to the point of criminality, Deutch disregarded the most elementary rules governing protection of classified information, and had to be given a last-minute pardon by President Bill Clinton.
R. James Woolsey: the man who outdid himself in trying to tie Saddam Hussein to 9/11, and in pushing into the limelight spurious intelligence from the fabricator known as "Curveball. Remember those fictitious biological weapons labs for which Colin Powell displayed "artist renderings to the U.N. on Feb. 5, 2003?
William Webster: Known mostly at Langley for his handsome face and his devotion to his late-afternoon matches with socialite tennis partners. (Folks like Webster should recognize that, once they have reached what my lawyer father used to call "the age of statutory senility, they should be more careful regarding what they let themselves be dragged into.)
James R. Schlesinger: "Big Jim launched his brief stint as CIA director by warning us all that his instructions were "to ensure that you guys do not screw Richard Nixon. To give substance to this assertion, he told us that the White House had said he was to report to political henchman Bob Haldeman "not Henry Kissinger, the national security advisor. More recently, Schlesinger led one of the see-no-evil Defense Department "investigations of the abuses of Abu Ghraib.
Quite a group, this Gang of Seven.
Their letter is also distinguished by a condescending tone, instructing the President: "As President you have the authority to make decisions restricting substantive interrogation" But the administration must be mindful that public disclosure about past intelligence operations can only help al-Qaeda elude US intelligence and plan future operations.
The seven then proceed to repeat the canard alleging that such collection "have saved lives and helped protect America from further attacks.
It reads as though Dick Cheney did their first draft. Actually, that would not be all that surprising, given his record of doing quite a lot of CIA's drafting for eight long years.
Holder, hold that line.
The original of this article appeared on Consortiumnews.com.
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