[Infowarrior] - DOJ lawer refuses Congressional request for legal opinion on surveillance

[Richard Forno]

Justice Lawyer Refuses to Give Congress Legal Opinions on NSA Surveillance
Program

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/06/justice_lawyer_.html

By Luke O'Brien EmailJune 07, 2007 | 3:29:43 PMCategories: Politics,
Surveillance  

413pxgeorge_iii_in_coronation_robes Clearly, the Justice Department has
nothing to hide. After an hour of stirring talk from witnesses about the
need for checks and balances, executive branch transparency and the
miscalculations of inherent power that led to the American Revolution,
Justice lawyer Steven Bradbury had precious little to say when Rep. Jerry
Nadler (D-New York) asked him to provide the legal opinions the Bush
administration relied on when unleashing a secret warrantless NSA
surveillance program that ended up spying on American citizens:

"No."

Bradbury said the documents are confidential and suggested that if the
committee were to try to get at them, executive privilege might get in the
way. Of course, the president, who Bradbury said re-authorized the NSA
program every 45 days for almost six years, would have to erect that hurdle
himself.

"So you're saying you won't give to Congress the requested documents because
they assert an executive privilege that you haven't asserted?" asked an
incredulous Nadler.

Yes.

The first House oversight hearing on the NSA's warrantless Terrorist
Surveillance Program went pretty much the same way: Legal heads railing
about how the White House has circumvented both the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act and the Fourth Amendment, and administration mouthpieces
obfuscating with disturbing ease.

Jameel Jaffer, an ACLU lawyer who represents a coalition of criminal defense
attorneys, journalists, and scholars that had formally challenged the
legality of the NSA program (last year, a federal court in Michigan agreed
with the ACLU that the program was illegal; the Bush administration has
appealed the decision.), urged Congress to issue subpoenas to learn more
about the executive branch's legal justifications, the involvement of
telecoms and what secret surveillance activities are going on today.

But Nadler's opening remarks may have best captured the spirit of a hearing
in which the specter of arsenic-mad King George III was invoked:

    "We rejected monarchy in this country more than 200 years ago. That
means that no President may become a law unto him or herself.  As with every
part of government, there must always be checks and balances. This President
appears to have forgotten that fact. Not only has he asserted the right to
go around the FISA Court and the Wiretap Act, but he has actually done so.
Even more disturbing, he does not believe that he is accountable to the
Congress, the courts, or anyone else....Many have begun to conclude that the
shroud of secrecy thrown over these activities has less to do with
protecting us from terrorism and more to do with protecting the
Administration from having its lawbreaking exposed."