"If the White House knew that Casey was there, they certainly should have shared it with us," Hamilton said, adding that "you have to rely on people" in authority to comply with information requests. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Second Thoughts about October Surprise."]
The House task force's failure to get at the truth about the October Surprise controversy resulted, in large part, from a determined cover-up by George H.W. Bush's administration, but it also benefited profoundly by having a key operative inside the investigation, Richard Leon.
So, when George W. Bush, the eldest son of the former president, found himself in the White House in 2001 (with the help of five Republican justices on the U.S. Supreme Court), Leon's name landed on a list of judicial candidates. He was nominated by Bush on Sept. 10, 2001, and confirmed by the Senate on Feb. 14, 2002.
But now with a Democratic president in the White House and with a lawsuit before him brought by right-wing activist Larry Klayman (who -- like Leon -- cut his proverbial teeth on the Clinton-era Whitewater "scandal"), Leon ruled in favor of Klayman's lawsuit.
Given the passion expressed in the ruling -- calling the NSA's technology "almost Orwellian" -- one might assume that Leon is simply expressing his inner constitutionalist. And that may well be the case. It is not uncommon for federal judges, after they get lifetime tenure, to demonstrate more intellectual independence.
But there is also no changing how Leon earned his Republican spurs that got him on the federal bench in the first place.
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