Judges Uneasy With Secrecy Issues In Spy Program

By ADAM LIPTAK

Published: January 26, 2007

The Bush administration has employed extraordinary secrecy in defending the National Security Agency’s highly classified domestic surveillance program from civil lawsuits. Plaintiffs and judges’ clerks cannot see its secret filings. Judges have to make appointments to review them and are not allowed to keep copies.

Judges have even been instructed to use computers provided by the Justice Department to compose their decisions.

But now the procedures have started to meet resistance. At a private meeting with the lawyers in one of the cases this month, the judges who will hear the first appeal next week expressed uneasiness about the procedures, said a lawyer who attended, Ann Beeson of the American Civil Liberties Union.         NYT Article

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   This can't be good! This looks like just another way for the Bush Crime Family to keep more of its illegal doings under wraps. Strategically, it makes sense because you cannot be sued if the opposing party has no evidence to use against you.

   Having to use computers provided by the Justice Department is definitely not in the judges best interest. Once again it is in Bush's best interest. I'd bet that those computers have been tampered with and I'd also wager that materials and finding have been or will be erased or changed. I see some of the decisions being changed if they are not favorable to Bushco.

Technorati tags: Judges, Secrecy, ACLU, Spy Program

   

NIE Report will Undermine Case For Escalation

    Once a scammer, always a scammer! That would be the Bush Crime Family once again.

    Think Progress:

NPR’s Rehm: Delayed Iraq NIE Will Undermine Case For Escalation

Six months ago, Harper’s Ken Silverstein reported that “in spite of pressure from CIA analysts, intelligence czar John Negroponte was blocking a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq.” National Intelligence Estimates present the consensus view of the U.S. intelligence apparatus. Despite pressure from Congress, the administration insisted it could not complete the NIE until January 2007.

Last week, however, an administration intelligence official told senators that the report is still not complete. According to Silverstein, Senate hearing attendees “believe that senior intelligence officials are stalling because an NIE will be bleak enough to present a significant political liability.”

Yesterday, NPR host Diane Rehm may have revealed why the NIE remains so politically sensitive. On her national radio show, Rehm said:

It’s my understanding that the National Intelligence Estimate…is going to suggest that adding troops is the wrong way to go, that it’s not going to improve the situation.

CLICK HERE FOR AUDIO

Yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), and the House and Senate intelligence committee chairmen wrote President Bush “urging prompt completion of a national intelligence estimate (NIE) on Iraq first requested by Congress six months ago.” Read the full letter HERE.

 

Technorati tags: NIE, Escalation