Okay, Denis Moynihan of Democracy Now(!) is filling in for Amy Goodman as moderator; that's fine, we'll roll with it.
Holtzman fields a question about the nature/balance/ease of impeachment. Nixon's was bipartisan, Clinton's partisan.
Kadidal fields a question... (I miss most of it, reading about Moynihan and Goodman and Hustler magazine. Interesting but sort of psycho. Seems like Moynihan and Goodman are against exploitation, so, go them.)
Now we go to Valeriani, who says Nixon, if alive, would ask, regarding Bush's surveillance and its extraordinary success, "Why the hell didn't I do it?"
(Some thoughts on this very humorous older fellow - Valeriani in a Huffington Post blog post: "Bin Laden tape rants against capitalism. Yo, Osama, where did you get your millions? Tape also urges Americans to convert to Islam. No thanks, we prefer the 21st Century."
Huq quite ably defends Muslim-Americans in another H.F. post.
But don't worry, V. skewers everybody: "Roman Catholic Diocese of San Diego announces $198 million settlement with plaintiffs who claimed they were sexually abused by priests. Big Bucks for Buggery.")
Valeriani is a journalist. He contacted Russians and worked in Cuba, back in the Cold War days, and had his phones tapped. The FBI called him routinely to ask him to help get Russians to give away sensitive information. When he didn't respond to FBI phone messages for two days, they showed up in front of buildings where he was headed. He had his records with the FBI checked - he was listed as "turned," a friendly informant. Lol.
Holtzman gets a round of vigorous applause for defending the impeachment of Bush and Cheney, no matter how hard such a process would be. (She's responding to V. and his assertion that - because, in the event of a successful B&C impeachment, Nancy Pelosi would become president - some might see an impeachment as an attempt at a "Democrat coup," which does sound silly, typing it.
She points out that a successful impeachment must be bipartisan; if Republicans don't want to impeach Bush, Democrats won't be able to do it alone.
Huq very smartly brings the whole question around to what will happen with the next president, regardless of her party? Will the next president not only abandon but help dismantle and prevent from being reinstated the illegal, warrantless surveillance programs? The extraordinary renditions to secret jails in Syria and Egypt? He defines the "Cheney version of the Constitution," which is that whenever the executive feels it needs to extend its powers in the name of national security, it simply can, no questions.
Don't think, Huq counsels, that a Pres. Obama or a Pres. Hillary won't use the Republican programs of domestic terror that Culture Project, Democracy Now(!), the CCR, the ACLU, and so many others are fighting against.
Valeriani speaks on "scar tissue," how we're no longer shocked by Bush's evils.
Audience Q1: Pressures on the election...
Holtzman says we need the president to be brought to justice, to show that Congress can do its thing(s) - pass laws and remove tyrants from office.
Audience Q2: If Pelosi hadn't taken impeachment off the table...
Kadidal, Holtzman, and Valeriani note that the American people and Dennis Kucinich want to impeach Bush; keep the pressure on, Pelosi will have to. It wasn't a problem (for the Speaker of the House - third in line for pres. after pres. and VP - to bring the pres. to justice) during Watergate.
Audience Q3: Cheney = brains of operation...
Valeriani: He lied about WMDs.
Huq: There's a great deal of public evidence about Cheney's aide's roles in setting aside FISA, torture laws, and the Geneva Conventions. You'd subpoena [Cheney's aides].
Audience Q4: How would ordinary people get Congress to listen, seriously...?
Holtzman: When was the last time you contacted your Congressperson? Get a meeting. Email. Get your block to sign a petition.
Moynihan has a show of hands for who gets the "Saturday Night Massacre" reference. (The audience, educated and in many cases old enough, gets it.)
Holtzman: The tapes were critical. Elliot Richardson appointed a special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, who looked for the tapes. The tapes got Nixon impeached. (People got fired, hence the massacre.) "We would have seen a similar event" - Ashcroft would have resigned. It's not clear what they changed to make their program compliant with FISA.
Audience Q5: 200,000 phone calls, that night, Saturday Night Massacre, to the Congress. We had 200,000 phone calls. You heard from us.
Audience Q6: Should we impeach Cheney first, because people seem to favor that, in polls? Then impeach Bush?
Holtzman (again): It will take a while to do two. It took a while for us to do one. We had to hire lawyers. The Democrats hired a Republican lawyer, and the Republicans hired a Republican lawyer. It hadn't been done in a hundred years - these things had to be studied. It took about nine months. So there's really enough time, to do it still. But there's not enough time to do Cheney and Bush. We have Bush's fingerprints on it. My whole view is to start the proceedings against Bush; we will accumulate evidence against Cheney.
One of the articles against Nixon was that he stonewalled us for information, and that was voted on by a bipartisan base. So there's a precedent. There's a lot of sentiment around the country for impeachment.
(Have any Congresspeople - Dems or Reps, candidates or not - seen our videos, site, blog? Do they know about this event? Shouldn't we, CP, tell them? Shouldn't we all?)
Huq: The Congress can hold court on its own. (Holtzman: We have our own jail!) The Congress can specifically subpoena the president and hold him in contempt if he doesn't show.
Qs-Final, there's a short storm of them.
Kadidal notes that other forms of government have Justice Departments that can go after corrupt executives. We do not have this. Certainly not in Mukasey...
Holtzman: What happened not only to Congress, but to the ACLU? I still believe it can be done, has to be done. With all the defects in the impeachment process, this is what the framers had exactly in mind. They were freaked about the misuse of power. They knew there was gonna be a Richard Nixon, a George Bush. There's too much misunderstanding about it. Even Obama said it's not democratic - it's in our Constitution, it's exactly democratic. What's the shape of our country going to be? No one else can make that decision for us?
***
This has been live blogging on surveillance; I'm back for one more live-blog-impeachy event on Sunday... (And, yes, for those who have read some of my earlier posts, I still like Obama but disagree with Obama on impeachment and wish Kucinich was as popular.)
Showing posts with label National Intelligence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label National Intelligence. Show all posts
Monday, December 10, 2007
Joshua Dratel and NSA Kids
After a brief reading of interview material shedding light on the weird episode of John Ashcroft and his revelation that Bush's domestic surveillance program was and is illegal, Mr. Dratel takes the stage.
Attorney-client privilege discussed at length.
So, one big problem with intercepting everybody's conversations, is that you intercept privileged conversations between attorneys and their clients, which is super-duper wrong (that's a legal term).
Dratel says that no Bush people complained about FISA, though they don't follow it. It's very easy to get FISA warrants, it sounds like.
Dratel testifies that Bush should indeed be impeached for wiretapping. Massive applause.
***
Now, before the panel, we go back to the court to hear about whether or not the illegal warrantless Bush NSA program is effective. Bush says it's saved "thousands of lives," but agents report that the vast majority most of their illegally garnered tips led to "dead ends or innocent Americans" (which are dead ends).
The IBM guy who invented modern ultra-precise data-mining says that the processes still aren't precise enough, and they couldn't possibly predicted terrorists (who, I'm guessing, are probably smart enough not to say, over a tapped phone, "Hey, let's BLOW STUFF UP" - meaning agents have to rely on bits and pieces that, according to some, usually lead "to Pizza Hut.").
***
CHECK OUT THIS NSA "KID'S PAGE." Wow. I mean, wow. As our tech points out, it's like Joe Camel. Neo-con militarism - now in eight MAD COOL fun cartoon morphing anime animal flavorz!
Maybe Amy Goodman, Mos Def, and I can bust out the ProgressivPoppers, a team of super-heroic delicious cheese-animated jalapeno- and nacho-based foods engineered by Dutch and South Korean scientists to help teach kids around the world about humanism, respect for life, science, democracy, the value of the arts, classlessness, etc.
Maybe not...
KIDZ, here's one "kewl" NSA-Lite character from whom you can learn how to install micro-cameras in your friends' Yu-Gi-Oh! lunchboxes:
Attorney-client privilege discussed at length.
So, one big problem with intercepting everybody's conversations, is that you intercept privileged conversations between attorneys and their clients, which is super-duper wrong (that's a legal term).
Dratel says that no Bush people complained about FISA, though they don't follow it. It's very easy to get FISA warrants, it sounds like.
Dratel testifies that Bush should indeed be impeached for wiretapping. Massive applause.
***
Now, before the panel, we go back to the court to hear about whether or not the illegal warrantless Bush NSA program is effective. Bush says it's saved "thousands of lives," but agents report that the vast majority most of their illegally garnered tips led to "dead ends or innocent Americans" (which are dead ends).
The IBM guy who invented modern ultra-precise data-mining says that the processes still aren't precise enough, and they couldn't possibly predicted terrorists (who, I'm guessing, are probably smart enough not to say, over a tapped phone, "Hey, let's BLOW STUFF UP" - meaning agents have to rely on bits and pieces that, according to some, usually lead "to Pizza Hut.").
***
CHECK OUT THIS NSA "KID'S PAGE." Wow. I mean, wow. As our tech points out, it's like Joe Camel. Neo-con militarism - now in eight MAD COOL fun cartoon morphing anime animal flavorz!
Maybe Amy Goodman, Mos Def, and I can bust out the ProgressivPoppers, a team of super-heroic delicious cheese-animated jalapeno- and nacho-based foods engineered by Dutch and South Korean scientists to help teach kids around the world about humanism, respect for life, science, democracy, the value of the arts, classlessness, etc.
Maybe not...
KIDZ, here's one "kewl" NSA-Lite character from whom you can learn how to install micro-cameras in your friends' Yu-Gi-Oh! lunchboxes:
Aziz Huq
...takes the stage. Discusses FISA, the big act that Holtzman, Kadidal, and the dapper Mr. Huq are speaking again and again about. Basically, FISA lets the executive ask a judge for permission to use electronic surveillance on a foreign power. President Carter signed it into law. It for the first time required a warrant for this surveillance. Huq points out the requirements are easy to meet, to get permission under FISA to use electronic surveillance.
Huq notes that FISA is a law; not even the president can get out of it. This sounds obvious, but it's worth thinking about: Most defenses of Bush, by Bush, by those of his supporters whom I've met, revolve around his just plain being the president.
Huq notes exceptions to FISA: If Congress declares war, the president gets fifteen days free of FISA; then he has to come back and ask for judicial permission for an extension. He can also, in an emergency (a "real" emergency, not just "the War on Terror," fought ad nauseam), the president can go ahead and spy, then come back and talk to the judiciary about it.
Discussion of the NSA - the president ordered the NSA to start surveillance without warrants. Pretty clear here. That's a big no-no, laws-wise. Bien fait!, if only we could get this dude into courts... I mean, into courts he hasn't already packed with his judges... So, I guess, into courts in another country. Darn.
Huq calls Alberto Gonzales an obfuscator (we concur, insofar as our non-attorney minds can understand the former Attorney General's mis-speeches).
Gray area of data-mining: Is it legal to use phone-company data to find "suspicious patterns of activity," paths, webs of calls linking terrorists, suspects, funders, etc.? Well, the next step after identifying paths is to trace those paths to individuals and spy on them. For which you need warrants.
Also, you can be "affiliated to Al-Qaeda" even if you're a cabbie and you pick up a suspect as a fare, or if you give money to any major Muslim charity. Then Bush can spy on you - you might be a suspect.
Also, also, the Pres. went against Congress and used the NSA to spy on U.S. citizens even after having been told not to. Huq says Bush has clearly committed high crimes. Nuff said (for our purposes).
Huq notes that FISA is a law; not even the president can get out of it. This sounds obvious, but it's worth thinking about: Most defenses of Bush, by Bush, by those of his supporters whom I've met, revolve around his just plain being the president.
Huq notes exceptions to FISA: If Congress declares war, the president gets fifteen days free of FISA; then he has to come back and ask for judicial permission for an extension. He can also, in an emergency (a "real" emergency, not just "the War on Terror," fought ad nauseam), the president can go ahead and spy, then come back and talk to the judiciary about it.
Discussion of the NSA - the president ordered the NSA to start surveillance without warrants. Pretty clear here. That's a big no-no, laws-wise. Bien fait!, if only we could get this dude into courts... I mean, into courts he hasn't already packed with his judges... So, I guess, into courts in another country. Darn.
Huq calls Alberto Gonzales an obfuscator (we concur, insofar as our non-attorney minds can understand the former Attorney General's mis-speeches).
Gray area of data-mining: Is it legal to use phone-company data to find "suspicious patterns of activity," paths, webs of calls linking terrorists, suspects, funders, etc.? Well, the next step after identifying paths is to trace those paths to individuals and spy on them. For which you need warrants.
Also, you can be "affiliated to Al-Qaeda" even if you're a cabbie and you pick up a suspect as a fare, or if you give money to any major Muslim charity. Then Bush can spy on you - you might be a suspect.
Also, also, the Pres. went against Congress and used the NSA to spy on U.S. citizens even after having been told not to. Huq says Bush has clearly committed high crimes. Nuff said (for our purposes).
Shayana Kadidal and Elizabeth Holtzman
...introduces the evening: We'll hear a history of surveillance law. He will act as prosecutor.
The court calls E. Holtzman (served in Congress 1972 - 1981) to the stand. She helped git Nixon ("git" in the "git-R-dun" sense as well as the typical one). She is now a private lawyer and writer. She also wrote The Impeachment of George W. Bush. (All of our friendly impeachment books have "impeachment" in their titles, no?)
The court (the performers) read the First and Fourth Amendments.
Kadidal and Holtzman discuss the legalities between wiretapping; the short version is, a court must, must approve wiretapping - all wiretapping. Not only the D.A.'s office, but an independent arbiter must approve wiretapping. "The mere fact of having a judicial review of wiretapping applications, is a restraint on wiretapping."
Kadidal asks why our Constitution's framers made a point to have the executive ask the judiciary for permission to search the citizens; Holtzman answers that the framers had experienced first-hand how illegal searches by the British had plagued the American people. Holtzman notes that no D.A. has complained about the theory behind the process by which wiretapping applications are approved (though they may gripe, one supposes, about individual processes).
The court quotes from the impeachment articles against Nixon, about wiretapping. You might mistake the words for ones about Bush, except that so far only a tiny minority of Democrats and we at Culture Project have taken the steps to try to impeach Bush.
The court notes that the government is now really good at "collecting information," meaning Google-good (in part, thanks to Google). What do "they" (who are they?) know about "us" (which grouping probably includes some of "they"/them)? They can know practically whatever they want. Doesn't mean the CIA will share the info with the FBI, or that the information will lead to any useful military info about, say, one homeless Arab guy on dialysis. But "they" can know a ton.
(Is/are Google/the government's linked servers artificially intelligent? That's my question. I mean, are we being used not only by a self-serving neo-con leadership, but also by an omni-computer addicted to knowin' stuff? It sounds silly to ask, I realize, but given the amount of sheer data in the world today, we're not necessarily far off from an era of a data-organism...)
We hear about the FBI taking on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., via surveillance. Holtzman points out that the FBI and the government in general worked very hard to collect info on, blackmail, discredit, and track the movements of various anti-Vietnam leaders.
The court calls E. Holtzman (served in Congress 1972 - 1981) to the stand. She helped git Nixon ("git" in the "git-R-dun" sense as well as the typical one). She is now a private lawyer and writer. She also wrote The Impeachment of George W. Bush. (All of our friendly impeachment books have "impeachment" in their titles, no?)
The court (the performers) read the First and Fourth Amendments.
Kadidal and Holtzman discuss the legalities between wiretapping; the short version is, a court must, must approve wiretapping - all wiretapping. Not only the D.A.'s office, but an independent arbiter must approve wiretapping. "The mere fact of having a judicial review of wiretapping applications, is a restraint on wiretapping."
Kadidal asks why our Constitution's framers made a point to have the executive ask the judiciary for permission to search the citizens; Holtzman answers that the framers had experienced first-hand how illegal searches by the British had plagued the American people. Holtzman notes that no D.A. has complained about the theory behind the process by which wiretapping applications are approved (though they may gripe, one supposes, about individual processes).
The court quotes from the impeachment articles against Nixon, about wiretapping. You might mistake the words for ones about Bush, except that so far only a tiny minority of Democrats and we at Culture Project have taken the steps to try to impeach Bush.
The court notes that the government is now really good at "collecting information," meaning Google-good (in part, thanks to Google). What do "they" (who are they?) know about "us" (which grouping probably includes some of "they"/them)? They can know practically whatever they want. Doesn't mean the CIA will share the info with the FBI, or that the information will lead to any useful military info about, say, one homeless Arab guy on dialysis. But "they" can know a ton.
(Is/are Google/the government's linked servers artificially intelligent? That's my question. I mean, are we being used not only by a self-serving neo-con leadership, but also by an omni-computer addicted to knowin' stuff? It sounds silly to ask, I realize, but given the amount of sheer data in the world today, we're not necessarily far off from an era of a data-organism...)
We hear about the FBI taking on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., via surveillance. Holtzman points out that the FBI and the government in general worked very hard to collect info on, blackmail, discredit, and track the movements of various anti-Vietnam leaders.
Article IV: Warrantless Surveillance
Monday, December 10, 7:00 p.m.
Participants include DemocracyNow! host Amy Goodman, former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, attorney Joshua Dratel, attorney Shayana Kadidal of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Aziz Huq of NYU's Brennan Center for Justice, and journalist Richard Valeriani.
(Kadidal, Huq, and Valeriani all appear on the Huffington Post, and you might have seen Huq speak with Lawrence Wright after our Town Hall performance of My Trip to Al-Qaeda.)
Performers include Michael Mastro, Nana Mensah, Gerry Bamman, Chris McKinney, and Sarah-Doe Osborne.
***
[Wythe's computer finally decides to connect to the internet - even for a "professional" internet-user, the connection process is still mysterious in the way that, oh, say, gravity is mysterious.]
We move briskly through the opening incantatory readings. The history of impeachment - check. Poetry - check. Barbara Jordan, Teddy Roosevelt, and others defending the use of impeachment against tyrants - check.
Now some new stuff on secret police. Quotes from Bush about saying he'll allow wiretapping for as long as he feels it necessary. Back to Nixon saying dumb shit about executive privilege: "There have been and there will be in the future..." times when the president can do whatever (literally whatever) he wants. Laughter. A great reading.
Participants include DemocracyNow! host Amy Goodman, former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, attorney Joshua Dratel, attorney Shayana Kadidal of the Center for Constitutional Rights, Aziz Huq of NYU's Brennan Center for Justice, and journalist Richard Valeriani.
(Kadidal, Huq, and Valeriani all appear on the Huffington Post, and you might have seen Huq speak with Lawrence Wright after our Town Hall performance of My Trip to Al-Qaeda.)
Performers include Michael Mastro, Nana Mensah, Gerry Bamman, Chris McKinney, and Sarah-Doe Osborne.
***
[Wythe's computer finally decides to connect to the internet - even for a "professional" internet-user, the connection process is still mysterious in the way that, oh, say, gravity is mysterious.]
We move briskly through the opening incantatory readings. The history of impeachment - check. Poetry - check. Barbara Jordan, Teddy Roosevelt, and others defending the use of impeachment against tyrants - check.
Now some new stuff on secret police. Quotes from Bush about saying he'll allow wiretapping for as long as he feels it necessary. Back to Nixon saying dumb shit about executive privilege: "There have been and there will be in the future..." times when the president can do whatever (literally whatever) he wants. Laughter. A great reading.
Monday, November 19, 2007
Ray McGovern On Intelligence, National Or Lacking
McGovern says the public wouldn't have stomached it if Bush and Cheney had come right out and said "we want to seize the oil in Iraq and make the region safe for Israel," so they played on fear. They were playing on fear anyway, then 9/11 happened.
(For more background: Here's a short CNN interview with McGovern that's full of juicy stuff about what Cheney lied about.)
Before 9/11, the link between al-Qaeda and Iraq was investigated and found lacking.
McG. tells a story: Bush was wandering alone in the White House just after 9/11 and took aside his aides and asked, "Was it Saddam? Was it Saddam?" He wanted all the evidence. He wanted to establish a link.
Long, crazy Bush quote about Saddam gassing his own people, then linking up with al-Qaeda. Very emphatic.
Tim Russert asked Cheney if there was any evidence linking Iraq and al-Q.; Cheney said it's "pretty well-confirmed" that one of the hijackers had a link...
PNAC strikes again...
Laptop is about to die. Must post and find new spot to plug in...
***
More McGovern, this time interviewed by Jon Stewart:
(For more background: Here's a short CNN interview with McGovern that's full of juicy stuff about what Cheney lied about.)
Before 9/11, the link between al-Qaeda and Iraq was investigated and found lacking.
McG. tells a story: Bush was wandering alone in the White House just after 9/11 and took aside his aides and asked, "Was it Saddam? Was it Saddam?" He wanted all the evidence. He wanted to establish a link.
Long, crazy Bush quote about Saddam gassing his own people, then linking up with al-Qaeda. Very emphatic.
Tim Russert asked Cheney if there was any evidence linking Iraq and al-Q.; Cheney said it's "pretty well-confirmed" that one of the hijackers had a link...
PNAC strikes again...
Laptop is about to die. Must post and find new spot to plug in...
***
More McGovern, this time interviewed by Jon Stewart:
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