[DEBATE] : Fwd: "We are one bomb away from our goal"

[Sean Jacobs]

>
> http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/09/04/addington/print.html
>
> Dick Cheney's top aide: "We're one bomb away" from our goal
>
> Revelations by Jack Goldsmith -- a right-wing, former high-level Bush 
> DOJ
> lawyer -- demonstrate the true extent of the administration's 
> lawlessness.
>
> Glenn Greenwald
>
> Sep. 04, 2007 |
>
> In October of 2003, Jack Goldsmith -- a right-wing lawyer with radical
> views of executive power and long-time friend of John Yoo -- was named 
> by
> the Bush administration to head the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel, one 
> of
> the most influential legal positions in the executive branch. During 
> his
> tenure, he discovered numerous legal positions which the 
> administration had
> adopted (many created by Yoo) that he found baseless and even
> unconscionable -- from torture to detention powers to illegal 
> surveillance
> -- and he repudiated many of them, thereby repeatedly infuriating the 
> most
> powerful White House officials, led by Cheney top aide David 
> Addington. As
> a result, his tenure was extremely brief, and he was gone a mere 9 
> months
> after he began.
> Goldsmith, now a Harvard Law Professor, has just written a book, to be
> released this month, criticizing and, in some cases, exposing for the 
> first
> time, many of Bush's executive power abuses. He is donating all the
> proceeds from the book to charity to prevent the standard integrity 
> attacks
> which Bush followers launch at any ex-officials who commit such 
> blasphemy.
> In a lengthy profile in The New York Times Magazine, Jeffrey Rosen 
> profiles
> Goldsmith and highlights some of the book's key revelations.
>
> Two revelations in particular are extraordinary and deserve (but are
> unlikely to receive) intense media coverage. First, it was Goldsmith 
> who
> first argued that the administration's secret, warrantless surveillance
> programs were illegal, and it was that conclusion which sparked the now
> famous refusal of Ashcroft/Comey in early 2004 to certify the program's
> legality. Goldsmith argued continuously about his conclusion with
> Addington, and during the course of those arguments, this is what 
> happened:
>
> [Goldsmith] shared the White House's concern that the Foreign 
> Intelligence
> Surveillance Act might prevent wiretaps on international calls 
> involving
> terrorists. But Goldsmith deplored the way the White House tried to 
> fix the
> problem, which was highly contemptuous of Congress and the courts. 
> "We're
> one bomb away from getting rid of that obnoxious [FISA] court," 
> Goldsmith
> recalls Addington telling him in February 2004.
> Their goal all along was to "get rid of the obnoxious FISA court" 
> entirely,
> so that they could freely eavesdrop on whomever they wanted with no
> warrants or oversight of any kind. And here is Dick Cheney's top aide,
> drooling with anticipation at the prospect of another terrorist attack 
> so
> that they could seize this power without challenge. Addington views the
> Next Terrorist Attack as the golden opportunity to seize yet more 
> power.
> Sitting around the White House dreaming of all the great new powers 
> they
> will have once the new terrorist attack occurs -- as Addington was 
> doing --
> is nothing short of deranged.
>
> Contrary to the claims made by Bush and his followers ever since the 
> NSA
> scandal arose, their real objective in secretly creating "The Terrorist
> Surveillance Program" was never to find a narrow means to circumvent 
> FISA
> when, in those few cases, it impeded necessary eavesdropping. Rather, 
> the
> goal was to get rid of FISA altogether and return the country to the 
> days
> when our government could spy on us in total secrecy, with no 
> oversight. Of
> course, until they could "get rid of" that law altogether -- through 
> the
> only tactic they know: exploitation of Terrorism -- they simply 
> decided to
> violate it at will.
>
> More revealing still is Goldsmith's description of how the Bush
> administration systematically violated one law after the next -- 
> employing
> tactics that are truly the hallmark of the most lawless third-world
> dictators:
>
> In his book, Goldsmith claims that Addington and other top officials
> treated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act the same way they 
> handled
> other laws they objected to: "They blew through them in secret based on
> flimsy legal opinions that they guarded closely so no one could 
> question
> the legal basis for the operations," he writes.
>
> Goldsmith's first experienced this extraordinary concealment, or 
> "strict
> compartmentalization," in late 2003 when, he recalls, Addington angrily
> denied a request by the N.S.A.'s inspector general to see a copy of the
> Office of Legal Counsel's legal analysis supporting the secret 
> surveillance
> program. "Before I arrived in O.L.C., not even N.S.A. lawyers were 
> allowed
> to see the Justice Department's legal analysis of what N.S.A. was 
> doing,"
> Goldsmith writes.
>
> They literally decided they would break whatever laws they wanted -- 
> one
> law after the next, in critical areas -- based on patently baseless 
> memos
> issued by obedient followers like John Yoo. Not only did they do this 
> in
> complete secrecy from Congress, they refused even to allow Executive 
> Branch
> officials who were told to follow orders to see the legal basis for 
> what
> they were told to do. Addington, whom Goldsmith described as "someone 
> who
> spoke for and acted with the full backing of the powerful vice 
> president,"
> would simply demand compliance with what Cheney wanted. And anyone who
> objected was subjected to this (emphasis in original):
>
> Months later, when Goldsmith tried to question another presidential
> decision, Addington expressed his views even more pointedly. "If you 
> rule
> that way," Addington exclaimed in disgust, Goldsmith recalls, "the 
> blood of
> the hundred thousand people who die in the next attack will be on your
> hands."
>
> While our national media was glorifying the Great Commander-in-Chief 
> and
> actively disseminating their most manipulative claims and mocking 
> Democrats
> on the pettiest of grounds (The Serious National Security Grown-ups 
> are in
> Charge; John Kerry windsurfs! John Edwards loves his hair!), the Bush
> administration was dismantling the rule of law, systematically 
> violating
> long-standing statutes and treaties at will. We were ruled by a truly
> lawless government, while our media institutions and political elite 
> sat by
> meek and respectful.
>
> Perhaps most infuriating is the fact that, as it turns out, violating 
> these
> laws in secret was not even necessary -- because Congress was, and 
> still
> is, more than happy to legalize whatever they wanted to do. Almost
> immediately after the Supreme Court finally imposed some mild 
> limitations
> on the President's detention and interrogation powers -- first in 
> Hamdi,
> then in Hamdan -- Congress, as Goldsmith says, "promptly passed a law 
> that
> gave him everything he asked for, authorizing many aspects of the 
> military
> commissions that the Supreme Court had struck down."
>
> And the terrorist bomb about which David Addington was fantasizing in 
> order
> to get rid of FISA was equally unnecessary, since the Democratic 
> Congress,
> in the face of the types of threats Goldsmith recounts Addington 
> routinely
> made -- "the blood of the hundred thousand people who die in the next
> attack will be on your hands" -- just eviscerated the crux of FISA's
> protections by law. Hence, what began as the administration's illegal 
> and
> secret abuses have become the legally sanctioned policies of the United
> States.
>
> It is critical to emphasize that Goldsmith -- like James Comey and John
> Ashcroft -- is no hero. He is a hard-core right-wing ideologue who
> continues to support many of the administration's most radical 
> positions,
> including his view that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions 
> does not
> apply to terrorist suspects (the position rejected by Hamdan). And it 
> was
> Goldsmith who ultimately approved of the modified (and plainly 
> illegal) NSA
> warrantless eavesdropping program.
>
> Moreover, Goldsmith explains that he had not even intended to address 
> the
> NSA surveillance program in his book, but changed his mind once he was
> served with subpoenas by the FBI in connection with the ongoing 
> criminal
> investigation to find out who the whistleblower was who alerted the 
> country
> to this illegality -- an investigation which Goldsmith supports. As
> Goldsmith says: "I'm not a civil libertarian, and what I did wasn't 
> driven
> by concerns about civil liberties per se."
> Goldsmith is commendable only by comparison to the truly extremist and
> reprehensible likes of Cheney, Addington, Gonzales and Yoo. He is, by 
> and
> large, a True Believer in the Bush "War on Terror" and in theories 
> designed
> to expand substantially executive power. That is what makes his 
> revelations
> all the more credible, and all the more disturbing. What he is 
> describing
> is a band of deranged and lawless radicals who, during his tenure, ran 
> our
> government and who, after they forced him out, continue to do so.
>
> But with little meaningful opposition to any of this -- either in the 
> media
> or in the Congress -- little attention will be paid to these 
> extraordinary
> revelations, and our government will continue to be shaped in the 
> image of
> Dick Cheney and David Addington. Now that they have obtained most of 
> their
> original wish list from a compliant Congress, just imagine what they 
> are
> dreaming of, the still new unchecked powers which they believe are only
> "one bomb away."
>
> -- Glenn Greenwald
>
>