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  #1  
Old 07-11-2009, 09:53 AM
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Thumbs down More disgusting than surprising...

Report: Too few officials knew of surveillance

By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer Pamela Hess, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – Not enough relevant officials were aware of the size and depth of an unprecedented surveillance program started under President George W. Bush, let alone signed off on it, a team of federal inspectors general found.

The Bush White House pulled in a great quantity of information far beyond the warrantless wiretapping previously acknowledged, the IGs reported. They questioned the legal basis for the effort but shielded almost all details on grounds they're still too secret to reveal.

The report, mandated by Congress last year and delivered to lawmakers Friday, also says it's unclear how much valuable intelligence the program has yielded.

On the subject of oversight, the report particularly criticizes John Yoo, a deputy assistant attorney general who wrote legal memos defending the policy. His boss, Attorney General John Ashcroft, was not aware until March 2004 of the exact nature of the intelligence operations beyond wiretapping that he had been approving for the previous two and a half years, the report says.

The report, compiled by five inspectors general, refers to "unprecedented collection activities" by U.S. intelligence agencies under an executive order signed by Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Just what those activities involved remains classified, but the IGs pointedly say that any continued use of the secret programs must be "carefully monitored."

Most of the intelligence leads generated under what was known as the "President's Surveillance Program" did not have any connection to terrorism, the report said. But FBI agents told the authors that the "mere possibility of the leads producing useful information made investigating the leads worthwhile."

The inspectors general interviewed more than 200 people inside and outside the government, but five former Bush administration officials refused to be questioned. They were Ashcroft, Yoo, former CIA Director George Tenet, former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card and David Addington, an aide to former Vice President Dick Cheney.

According to the report, Addington could personally decide who in the administration was "read into" — allowed access to — the classified program.

The only piece of the intelligence-gathering operation acknowledged by the Bush White House was the wiretapping-without-warrants effort. The administration acknowledged in 2005 that it had allowed the National Security Agency to intercept international communications that passed through U.S. cables without seeking court orders.

Although the report documents Bush administration policies, its fallout could be a problem for the Obama administration if it inherited any or all of the still-classified operations.

Bush brought the warrantless wiretapping program under the authority of a secret court in 2006, and Congress authorized most of the intercepts in a 2008 electronic surveillance law. The fate of the remaining and still classified aspects of the wider surveillance program is not clear from the report.

The report's revelations came the same day that House Democrats said that CIA Director Leon Panetta had ordered one 8-year-old classified program shut down after learning lawmakers had never been apprised of its existence.

The IG report said that Bush signed off on both the warrantless wiretapping and other top-secret operations shortly after Sept. 11 in a single presidential authorization. All the programs were periodically reauthorized, but except for the acknowledged wiretapping, they "remain highly classified."

Former Bush Attorney General Alberto Gonzales made a terse reference to other classified programs in an August 2007 letter to Congress. But Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., said that when she had asked Gonzales two years earlier if the government was conducting any other undisclosed intelligence activities, he denied it.

Robert Bork Jr., Gonzales' spokesman, said, "It has clearly been determined that he did not intend to mislead anyone."

In the wake of the new report, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt, renewed his call Friday for a formal nonpartisan inquiry into the government's information-gathering programs.

Former CIA Director Michael Hayden — the primary architect of the program — told the report's authors that the surveillance was "extremely valuable" in preventing further al-Qaida attacks. Hayden said the operations amounted to an "early warning system" allowing top officials to make critical judgments and carefully allocate national security resources to counter threats.

Information gathered by the secret program played a limited role in the FBI's overall counterterrorism efforts, according to the report. Very few CIA analysts even knew about the program and therefore were unable to fully exploit it in their counterterrorism work, the report said.

The report questioned the legal advice used by Bush to set up the program, pinpointing omissions and questionable legal memos written by Yoo, in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. The Justice Department withdrew the memos years ago.

The report says Yoo's analysis approving the program ignored a law designed to restrict the government's authority to conduct electronic surveillance during wartime, and did so without fully notifying Congress. And it said flaws in Yoo's memos later presented "a serious impediment" to recertifying the program.

Yoo insisted that the president's wiretapping program had only to comply with Fourth Amendment protections against search and seizure — but the report said Yoo ignored the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which had previously overseen federal national security surveillance.

House Democrats are pressing for legislation that would expand congressional access to secret intelligence briefings, but the White House has threatened to veto it.



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  #2  
Old 07-11-2009, 12:40 PM
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Great program, apparently worked. All buildings still standing.
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  #3  
Old 07-11-2009, 12:44 PM
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what happened to the small government republicans? i miss those guys, especially staring into the freedomless abyss created by these conservatives.
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  #4  
Old 07-11-2009, 02:13 PM
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Originally Posted by Squabble View Post
what happened to the small government republicans? i miss those guys...

I wish I knew. I respected those people. Why people still support the party is a mystery.
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  #5  
Old 07-11-2009, 02:26 PM
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Originally Posted by Emmerich View Post
Great program, apparently worked. All buildings still standing.
No buildings have fallen since our economy's been terrible either. We should keep having a terrible economy.
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  #6  
Old 07-11-2009, 02:36 PM
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Give the problem to the Supreme Court...maybe they can layer another level of "lawyer-speak" onto already-onerous laws and the like...

The 4th Amendment isn't good enough...the next layer is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act...which isn't good enough...

Send in the clown....er...the Supremes...

They'll have everyone dancing in no time...
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  #7  
Old 07-11-2009, 03:54 PM
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Originally Posted by Emmerich View Post
Great program, apparently worked. All buildings still standing.
Bush apparently broke the law, and definitely violated the constitution.
In violating the constitution, Bush et al broke their sworn to God oath to honor and protect the constitution.
Anyone cheering the trampling of our rights doesn't deserve to be protected by those rights.
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  #8  
Old 07-11-2009, 04:00 PM
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Originally Posted by Chas H View Post
Bush apparently broke the law, and definitely violated the constitution.
In violating the constitution, Bush et al broke their sworn to God oath to honor and protect the constitution.
Anyone cheering the trampling of our rights doesn't deserve to be protected by those rights.
How 'bout that President Bush!

Greatest President since Lincoln and Reagan!
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  #9  
Old 07-11-2009, 04:01 PM
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Originally Posted by tankdriver View Post
No buildings have fallen since our economy's been terrible either. We should keep having a terrible economy.
Doh!

There would be no economy to complain about.........
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  #10  
Old 07-11-2009, 04:05 PM
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Originally Posted by link View Post
I wish I knew. I respected those people. Why people still support the party is a mystery.
If it's that bad......show us where it hurts, so's we can send some flowers?
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  #11  
Old 07-11-2009, 04:11 PM
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Originally Posted by Chas H View Post
Anyone cheering the trampling of our rights doesn't deserve to be protected by those rights.
Did you really just say that?
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  #12  
Old 07-11-2009, 05:11 PM
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Originally Posted by MTUpower View Post
Did you really just say that?
I really did type it.
You got a problem with the constitution?
Or the president's oath of office?
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
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  #13  
Old 07-11-2009, 05:20 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Emmerich View Post
Great program, apparently worked. All buildings still standing.
Worked good in Communist Russia too.
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  #14  
Old 07-11-2009, 05:54 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Chas H View Post
...
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
Yep...and that "OOO" that the Congresspeople have to swear to...it gets soooooooo messy having to have that hanging over their heads...like they really adhere to it like they're suppose to...
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M. G. Burg
'10 - Dakota SXT - Daily Ride / ≈ 172.5K
.'76 - 450SLC - 107.024.12 / < .89.20 K
..'77 - 280E - 123.033.12 / > 128.20 K
...'67 - El Camino - 283ci / > 207.00 K
....'75 - Yamaha - 650XS / < 21.00 K
.....'87 - G20 Sportvan / > 206.00 K
......'85 - 4WINNS 160 I.O. / 140hp
.......'74 - Honda CT70 / Real 125

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“I didn’t really say everything I said.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ~ Yogi Berra ~
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  #15  
Old 07-11-2009, 06:02 PM
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Originally Posted by Jim B. View Post
Worked good in Communist Russia too.
Yep...but in Russia, as soon as they caught something said, they'd be at your door and in no time at all, your neighbors forgot who you were and you'd be pounding icicles for 25+ years in Outer-Siberia...

Here, we just store the stuff 'til you run for pubic (sic) office and someone wants a "favor" done for them...

That's how the G-Mafia works...

"You know that we know what you don't want anyone to know, but we won't let anyone know what we know until we need to know more. THEN, you're just plain outta' luck...in case you didn't know."

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M. G. Burg
'10 - Dakota SXT - Daily Ride / ≈ 172.5K
.'76 - 450SLC - 107.024.12 / < .89.20 K
..'77 - 280E - 123.033.12 / > 128.20 K
...'67 - El Camino - 283ci / > 207.00 K
....'75 - Yamaha - 650XS / < 21.00 K
.....'87 - G20 Sportvan / > 206.00 K
......'85 - 4WINNS 160 I.O. / 140hp
.......'74 - Honda CT70 / Real 125

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“I didn’t really say everything I said.”
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ~ Yogi Berra ~
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