BREAKING: Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenas White House, Cheney, DOJ & NSA on wiretapping

[updated 3:40 p.m. CDT]

AP is reporting that the Senate Judiciary Committee has just subpoenaed the White House, Vice President Dick Cheney, the Justice Department and the National Security Council on the warrantless eavesdropping program.

The committee wants documents that might shed light on internal squabbles within the administration over the legality of the program, said a congressional official speaking on condition of anonymity because the subpoenas had not been made public.

Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey's testimony about the hospital-room pressure put on then AG John Ashcroft may well have been the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back, AP says.

[1:30 p.m. update]

John at AMERICAblog makes the interesting point that this subpoena will probably force Cheney to claim executive privilege. This will force him to drop his silly argument that the vice president is the 4th branch of government. Of course, Cheney is already shifting his stand on that goofiness.

[3:40 p.m. update]

TPM has more details on the committee's action.

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Integrity Counts

I spent the last several minutes thinking about what to write this morning. There are a lot of topics out there. The Simpsons 400th episode trashes Fox News. (I might save that one for later). Jimmy Carter had a lot to say about George Bush and Tony Blair, none of it good. Voter suppression mastermind Mark "Thor" Hearne, a name known here in Missouri, has been featured in Slate and not in a good way.

All those stories are pretty obvious. I mean that Fox News doesn't do news, isn't news. Anybody who cares to look realizes it is Republican infotainment intended to keep the white masses content in their self-loathing and justified in their racial bigotry. Jimmy Carter has been assailed for his comments about Blair and Bush, but darned if I can see why. He simply told the truth. Mark Hearne, Brad Schlozman, Hans von Spakovsky are simply bit players carrying out Karl Rove's version of Nixon's old Southern strategy. Stop the blacks from voting and white Republicans win.

Then I saw a story of hope. David Iglesias is building a new life. I thought about it for a minute. Do you know who the winners are in the US Attorney scandal? The winners are the fired attorneys. Their lives have all been carefully examined by the media, and they have all been certified to be professional lawyers striving to achieve the highest ethical standards. Long after the many US Attorneys who knuckled under to Karl Rove are forgotten in their suburban practices the Gonzales 8 will be held up as models of how US Attorneys should act. Long after Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling are utterly forgotten, their careers in tatters, people like Carol Lam, Bud Cummins and John McKay will be building their futures and fully living their lives. Hell, who knows, one of those fired US Attorneys might run for senator, maybe in New Mexico.

James Comey has emerged as a hero in the Department of Justice scandal because he stood for what was right. So have all the people who stood with him. Even John Ashcroft, who doesn't even mention the episode in his book, looks better, so much better that Blue Girl had to remind us of just who we are talking about. I know who John Ashcroft is and what he has done, but darn if the image of him saying "NO" Alberto Gonzales and Andy Card hasn't forced me to give him a higher mark.

Today I choose to remember that integrity counts. People who display courage in the face of adversity are often rewarded. Good guys can finish first.

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Bush Defends Gonzales, Charges Political Theater.

In a world where the law is meaningless, power is unchecked and loyalty is everything, President Bush has declared unflinching support for his embattled attorney general. He charges the Democrats with political theater.

In related news a trailer has just been released promoting a new movie about the rapidly developing scandal.



Now that's true political theater.

Sorry bmaz, I couldn't resist.

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WHY the Gonzo-Card rush to Ashcroft’s hospital?

On a political chat site, an acquaintance raised this issue about why Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card felt they HAD to The New York Times rush to John Ashcroft’s hospital bed and force him to sign another extension for their domestic warrentless wiretapping, when such extensions ran just 45 days at a time anyway.

My answer?

Could this be because political ops were involved?

Here’s what I told her:

I haven’t seen THAT broached yet on Talking Points Memo. It’s a VERY good question, though.

A possibility that pops into my head, given what all else were finding out about Gonzo and Rove and the “vote fraud” scam-crap, and how the Watergate similarities are ratcheting up ...

This is 2004, mind you. Presidential election year, etc.

What if some of this wiretapping is, as with the Nixon years (and some degree the Johnson years) ...

Political operations?

Think about it.

Cross-posted at SocraticGadfly.

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What Do We Do Now, Fred?

In her excellent post entitled What Will It Take To Put Impeachment Back On The Table BlueGirl quotes an editorial in The Washington Post at length. The Post published another editorial yesterday entitled The Gonzales Coverup pretty much on the same subject.

Glenn Greenwald at Salon has some questions for Fred Hiatt of the Washington Post Editorial Board. He notes that the Post's May 17, editorial begins

WHY IS IT only now that the disturbing story of the Bush administration's willingness to override the legal advice of its own Justice Department is emerging? The chief reason is that the administration, in the person of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, stonewalled congressional inquiries and did its best to ensure that the shameful episode never came to light.

Greenwald points out that basically all the necessary information has been out there for years. Then he answers the question:

(T)he Beltway establishment, led by the likes of Hiatt, decided that the President's lawbreaking was really nothing to be too bothered by, that those who objected to it were shrill and hysterical, and they found justification, or at least sufficient mitigation, to look the other way and acquiesce to the notion that the Bush administration could break the law at will and that there ought to be no real consequences arising from that behavior.

He concludes

Hiatt-like protests are welcome (even if inexcusably belated), but they must be accompanied by genuine and relentless demands for follow-up and accountability otherwise they will amount to nothing more than inconsequential rhetoric. The Attorney General lied continuously, and the administration concealed pervasive criminality at the highest levels of our government. Even Fred Hiatt says so. So now what?

Fred, Tim, and all of you inside the beltway establishment types, by turning a blind eye to the president's lawless actions you have been enablers.

What are the results of your handiwork? We now have a completely politicized Department of Justice led by a serial liar, a man utterly without integrity. We are bogged down in an optional war against the wrong people. Thousands have died for little or no reason other than some neo-con dream of empire. Our government engages in torture which our Attorney General and President euphemistically call "enhanced interrogation techniques." Nine of the ten Republican presidential hopefuls endorse torture. The only one who doesn't is the only one who knows anything about it. We have repealed habeas corpus, one of the bed rocks of our democracy. Our very democracy is threatened. Did I mention that Osama Bin Ladin and his gang still run free.

Our President openly and notoriously violated the law, and you all turned a blind eye. There is only one "industry" specifically protected by the Constitution--the press. It isn't protected because you had great lobbyists. It is protected because the founders knew there would be Presidents like George Bush. They protected your business to check official lawlessness. What do we do now boys? "What will be done about James Comey's revelations?"

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"A Clear Impeachable Offense." Jonathan Turley.

"The problem comes down to the failure of Congress to deal with what is a very ugly and unfortunate fact. This would be a clear impeachable offense. I don't know of a more potential charge of impeachment within the modern presidency." Jonathan Turley.

To quote Glenn Greenwald in Salon

The overarching point here, as always, is that it is simply crystal clear that the President consciously and deliberately violated the law and committed multiple felonies by eavesdropping on Americans in violation of the law.

It cannot be overstated. We are not talking about the conclusions of some liberal activist judge with a political grudge. In this case the violations of the law and constitution were so egregious that

the President's own political appointees -- the two top Justice Department officials, including one (Ashcroft) who was known for his "aggressive" use of law enforcement powers in the name of fighting terrorism and at the expense of civil liberties -- were so convinced of its illegality that they refused to certify it and were preparing, along with numerous other top DOJ officials, to resign en masse once they learned that the program would continue notwithstanding the President's knowledge that it was illegal.

What does it take folks?

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John And Jerry Write Alberto A Letter

Apparently the House Judiciary Committee was paying attention to Comey's testimony. Today Chairman John Conyers and Subcommittee Chairman Jerrold Nadler sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales demanding answers to specific questions and greater access to information concerning the NSA's Domestic Wiretap program. You can see the letter at a website called CRIMES AND CORRUPTION OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS. Generally the letter asks Gonzales

1) Is Mr. Comey’s testimony about the events of March, 2004 as provided this week to the Senate Judiciary Committee (a copy of which is enclosed with this letter) accurate and, if not, please explain your version of what happened.

2) Was the classified program referred to by Mr. Comey the Terrorist Surveillance Program, as it existed prior to the changes made according to the Justice Department’s recommendations and, if not, what was the classified program that Mr. Comey was referring to?

3) Who was involved in deciding to seek approval from Attorney General Ashcroft from his hospital bed and who made the telephone call to arrange your visit to his bedside?

4) What was the basis for the Administration’s decision on March 10-11 to continue with the program despite the Department’s objections, how long did it so continue. Please provide copies of any legal or other memoranda on the subject?

5) What was the basis for the Department’s objections to the program. Please provide copies of any Office of Legal Counsel or other documents relating to those objections? and

6) What changes were made to the program to resolve the Department’s objections

Just the questions I want answered. The only question I would have added is "What changes to the program did you authorize after you became Attorney General?"

According to a RAWSTORY by Michael Roston Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) is worried that Comey's testimony "raises serious questions about the NSA program and the White House's heavy-handed determination to continue it." Ya think.

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Exactly How Bad Was The Domestic Spying Program Anyway?

I know you are probably bored with the entire Gonzales/Ashcroft Hospital Story, but if you watched the video you probably realize that the program Ashcroft and Comey refused to certify was so bad damn near everybody at the top of the Justice Department was willing to walk if the President didn't relent.

Paul Kiel over at TPMMuckraker has just published an anonymous, but an extraordinarily well written and knowledgeable comment from one of its readers providing us a lot of background and asking a lot of pointed questions. If the New York Times can republish anonymous sources we ought to be able to republish anonymous blog comments.

When the warrantless wiretap surveillance program came up for review in March of 2004, it had been running for two and a half years. We still don't know precisely what form the program took in that period, although some details have been leaked. But we now know, courtesy of Comey, that the program was so odious, so thoroughly at odds with any conception of constitutional liberties, that not a single senior official in the Bush administration's own Department of Justice was willing to sign off on it. In fact, Comey reveals, the entire top echelon of the Justice Department was prepared to resign rather than see the program reauthorized, even if its approval wasn't required. They just didn't want to be part of an administration that was running such a program.

This wasn't an emergency program; more than two years had elapsed, ample time to correct any initial deficiencies. It wasn’t a last minute crisis; Ashcroft and Comey had both been saying, for weeks, that they would withhold approval. But at the eleventh hour, the President made one final push, dispatching his most senior aides to try to secure approval for a continuation of the program, unaltered.

I think it’s safe to assume that whatever they were fighting over, it was a matter of substance. When John Ashcroft is prepared to resign, and risk bringing down a Republican administration in the process, he’s not doing it for kicks. Similarly, when the President sends his aides to coerce a signature out of a desperately ill man, and only backs down when the senior leadership of a cabinet department threatens to depart en masse, he’s not just being stubborn.

It’s time that the Democrats in Congress blew the lid off of the NSA’s surveillance program. Whatever form it took for those years was blatantly illegal; so egregious that by 2004, not even the administration’s most partisan members could stomach it any longer. We have a right to know what went on then. We publicize the rules under which the government can obtain physical search warrants, and don’t consider revealing those rules to endanger security; there’s no reason we can’t do the same for electronic searches. The late-night drama makes for an interesting news story, but it’s really beside the point. The punchline here is that the President of the United States engaged in a prolonged and willful effort to violate the law, until senior members of his own administration forced him to stop. That’s the Congressional investigation that we ought to be having.

Never forget that it is now firmly established that the Administration has been running the DoJ as an arm of the Republican party. If we Americans don't get to the bottom of this story our very way of life could be at risk. Our mission, citizen journalists, is to legally find out and share all we can about the NSA's surveillance program or at least demand our Representatives and Senators investigate for and report to us.

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Comey's Testimony About The Gonzales/Ashcroft Hospital Exchange

This is shocking stuff. Ashcroft rises from his sick bed to say NO to Alberto Gonzales. It is pretty clear that Gonzales and Card were under a great deal of pressure when they went to the hospital. The initial call may have come from the President. Hummmmm, who could put that kind of pressure on Alberto Gonzales and Andy Card?

It is also clear that if the President hadn't relented that damn near all of the competent lawyers at the top of the DOJ and the FBI director would have walked rather than support the non-certified Domestic Surveillance Program Gonzales wanted certified. The President relented, but Ashcroft and Comey were replaced.

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