[Infowarrior] - Bush Allows Clearances for N.S.A. Inquiry

[Richard Forno]

My only question is -- "why now, all of a sudden?"  ---rf


Bush Allows Clearances for N.S.A. Inquiry
By SCOTT SHANE
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/14/washington/14justice.html?hp=&pagewanted=p
rint

WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 ‹ Just four days after Michael B. Mukasey was sworn in
as attorney general, Justice Department officials said Tuesday that
President Bush had reversed course and approved long-denied security
clearances for the Justice Department¹s ethics office to investigate the
National Security Agency¹s warrantless surveillance program. The
department¹s inspector general has been investigating the department¹s
involvement with the N.S.A. program for about a year, but the move suggested
both that Mr. Mukasey wanted to remedy what many in Congress saw as an
improper decision by the president to block the clearances and that the
White House chose to back him.

Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, and Brian Roehrkasse, a Justice
Department spokesman, declined to say whether Mr. Mukasey had pressed Mr.
Bush on the clearances for the department¹s Office of Professional
Responsibility. Mr. Mukasey himself had indicated in a written answer to
senators on Oct. 30, before his confirmation, that the clearance issue had
been resolved. But Democrats said they thought Mr. Mukasey deserved credit.

³It seems the new attorney general understands that his responsibility is to
the American people and the rule of law and not to any particular person,
including the president,² said Representative Maurice D. Hinchey, Democrat
of New York, who had first demanded the internal Justice Department
investigation.

In response to appeals from Mr. Hinchey and other members of Congress, the
head of the Office of Professional Responsibility, H. Marshall Jarrett, said
in February 2006 that he had opened an investigation of the conduct of
department lawyers in approving and overseeing the N.S.A. program. But three
months later he said the inquiry had been dropped because his staff had been
denied the necessary high-level clearances.

The Justice Department later said that Alberto R. Gonzales, the attorney
general at the time, had recommended that the clearances be granted but that
Mr. Bush declined to approve them.

Mr. Roehrkasse said the Office of Professional Responsibility¹s
investigation ³will focus on whether the D.O.J. attorneys who were involved
complied with their ethical obligations of providing competent legal advice
to their client and of adhering to their duty of candor to the court.²

Officials said it was unlikely that either of the inquiries would address
directly the question of the legality of the N.S.A. program itself : whether
eavesdropping on American soil without court warrants violated the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act. They said that decision had been left to the
courts.

Under the program, which began after the Sept. 11 attacks and ended in
January, the National Security Agency intercepted without court warrants the
international phone calls and e-mail messages of Americans and others in the
United States suspected of ties to Al Qaeda.

The Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department initially approved the
program in late 2001. But the head of the office, Jack Goldsmith, decided in
2004 that part of the program violated the law and declined to reauthorize
it. Mr. Bush agreed to change the program to satisfy the legal objections.