The NY Times has a front-page article that exposes behavior that can only be described as Orwellian. The only other way I can think to describe it is that this is how an authoritarian police state behaves.
Update: added poll below
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.
The article goes on...
In ordinary civil suits, the parties’ submissions are sent to their adversaries and are available to the public in open court files. But in several cases challenging the eavesdropping, Justice Department lawyers have been submitting legal papers not by filing them in court but by placing them in a room at the department. They have filed papers, in other words, with themselves.
At the meeting this month, judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit asked how the procedures might affect the integrity of the files and the appellate records.
In response, Joan B. Kennedy, a Justice Department official, submitted, in one of the department’s unclassified filings, a detailed seven-page sworn statement last Friday defending the practices.
"The documents reviewed by the court have not been altered and will not be altered," Ms. Kennedy wrote, and they "will be preserved securely as part of the record of this case."
Riiiight....
Then why this
Soon after one suit challenging the program was filed last year in Oregon, Justice Department lawyers threatened to seize an exhibit from the court file.
This month, in the same case, the department sought to inspect and delete files from the computers on which lawyers for the plaintiffs had prepared their legal filings
They clearly have something to hide, and it has nothing to do with national security. This is a criminal cover-up. And this exposure is the first hint that we are going to witness the exposure of a criminal conspiracy that undoubtedly goes all the way to the President. He's already admitted in public that he authorized the crime.
The bombshell is actually buried on page 2, which is the disclosure that a document proves that plaintiffs in a civil case were spied on without a warrant:
That document indicated, according to court filings, that the government monitored communications between officers of the charity and two of its lawyers without a warrant in spring 2004.
"If I gave you this document today and you put it on the front page of The New York Times, it would not threaten national security," Mr. Eisenberg, a lawyer for the foundation, said. "There is only one thing about it that’s explosive, and that’s the fact that our clients were wiretapped."
And copies of the document exist and have gone outside the country.
copies of the document appear to have been sent abroad, and the government concedes that it has made no efforts to contact people overseas who it suspects have them.
"It’s probably gone many, many places," Judge King said of the document at the August hearing. "Who is it secret from?"
A Justice Department lawyer, Andrew H. Tannenbaum, replied, "It’s secret from anyone who has not seen it."
Do they think we are complete and utter fools?
The Democrats should be investigating and preparing for impeachment proceedings against lower-level Bush Administration officials involved in these criminal activities. Alberto Gonzalez as Attorney General has clearly participated in the criminal NSA program as well as the cover-up and must be investigated and impeached if necessary. Officials in the Office of the Vice President, starting with Scooter Libby, should also face Congressional investigation and impeachment proceedings if found guilty of high crimes or misdemeanors.
Impeachment means these people can never hold government office in the US, again. And it means they cannot be pardoned. I think the country deserves an injection of truth serum from some of these people below Bush and Cheney, once they know they cannot be pardoned for their crimes.
Crossposted at The New Down