As the sports stadium barkers say:  You can't tell the traitors players without a scorecard.  I'm sure anyone who follows the FISA fight is familiar with James Cicconi but I thought hey, why not shine a spotlight on him?  So, let's give Mr. Cicconi the attention he deserves - we'll start just before things went to Hell in America.

WaPo - 9/26/99

Former president George Bush's longtime advisers were troubled. Bush's son was about to launch a presidential bid and some of these once powerful Washington figures felt frozen out. So after an advisory board meeting earlier this year at the Bush presidential library in College Station, Tex., they decided to raise the issue with their former boss.

Hmmm... I wonder how this will turn out.  Let's take a look!

Just a short diary today. I had a letter in my inbox from Patrick Leahy and John Conyers asking for help in protecting America from At&T, and thought I'd forward it to everyone who didn't get one.

Here it is:

email to senators on FISA update WITHOUT amnesty

Brief description below

To: U.S. Representative Steny H. Hoyer
     U.S. Senator John D. Rockefeller

Honorable Gentlemen --

I see from the news that the telecom industry efforts to receive blanket immunity for violation of this nation's domestic surveillance laws are still quite active. Their campaign to place pressure on the Congress via the placement of industry funded, faux-grassroots ads, their willingness to draft proposals for how, exactly, their own immunity should be phrased, the continuing refusal to actually describe what it is they are asking immunity for -- all impressive efforts. And they have what can only be described as a true champion in the Bush Administration, which has acted nobly to protect the interests of these fine companies. So it seems only natural that right-thinking legislators such as yourselves would want to go along, so as to not rock the boat.

It seems, then, we are at a bit of an impasse. You want to provide the industry immunity for still-unknown years of illegal surveillance, immunity the industry is adamantly demanding. But at the moment, you cannot rouse sufficient support for the act because it would make you all look like cheap, easily bought corporatophiles in the pocket of some of the highest paid lobbyists in the land -- mere legislative hacks who can be bought off with trinkets, or threatened with bullying advertisements, or who believe laws are negotiable things, depending on how much money you have or how powerful your friends are. This is because the public, against all expectations, is actually paying attention.

Fear not: I have a bargain to strike. I would like to announce that we, the slovenly and ignorant public, would be willing to drop our unreasonable outrage over corporations in this nation being given blanket retroactive immunity for violating both federal law and our own personal privacy... for a price of our own. A quid pro quo, if you will -- and certainly, I expect you are well familiar with such arrangements. We simply want a little payback, in order to make sure that you in Congress are asked to live according to the same rules as the rest of us.

Here is my proposal. We, the public, should be allowed to spy on you, and all those you come in contact with, with similar promisees of amnesty.

For each member of Congress, I propose we set up a collective internet site. This site will allow interested members of the public to, in realtime, monitor your every activity to assure ourselves that none of you are committing illegal or terrorist-enabling acts at any given moment of the day.

The primary feature will be the ability to listen in to any conversation you may be having, whether it be on your work phone, your home phone, your cell phone, text messages, email -- whatever. These conversations will be streamed to the internet, so that they may be monitored by responsible members of the public. The contact information of whoever it is you are talking to at that moment at time will also be displayed and tracked -- whether it be your wife or husband, child, doctor, secret mistress, whoever -- so that we can monitor them as well. You know, just to be safe.

You can trust us, as members of the public, to be discreet. We will only listen and watch, and will not abuse the information. After all, what could any of you possibly have to hide? Only someone intent on criminal acts objects to being monitored proactively. On the contrary, you should be grateful to us: by listening to your every phone call and reading your every communication, we can only help you to prove that you have nothing to hide. I am unfamiliar with the vagaries of American law these days, but my understanding is that this ongoing surveillance will make you even more innocent than you were before. Perhaps you will even be twice as innocent as before, or four times as innocent -- what patriot could resist?

This, though, is still not quite the proper balance between your privacy and our needs as citizens. We need more of a total information awareness into your doings -- you know, just to be sure you are not terrorists, or at the very least secretly drug dealers or ethnic or something. You will therefore have all your personal bills posted to the same website: credit card bills, mortgage statements, monthly electricity usage, bank statements, etc. You need not worry, of course, about doing this yourself: there are companies already tracking all of this information, and government projects dedicated to sweeping it up to look for suspicious patterns.

Again, there is nothing you could possibly have to hide... unless, perhaps, you have taken any trips abroad lately? That could cause some problems. Or if you have eaten at the same restaurants as other people being investigated... or have an unusual pattern of travel within the country... or have moved, recently. Oh -- or have bought more than one bottle of cough syrup in the last few months, or have acquaintances with suspicious-sounding names, or own your own business. Aside from that, you should be in the clear.

I admit, this at first sounds intrusive. Consider this, though: what if one of your fellow Congressmen turned out to be -- and I pause, here, for dramatic effect -- a terrorist sympathizer? Sure, you consider the possibility unlikely, but if there was even the slightest, slightest chance that someone surrounding you was a secret Jihadist, would you not be willing to give up any amount of privacy, in order to prove your own innocence and help the authorities (in this case, we watchful members of the public) narrow down the list of subjects by conducting surveillance upon each of you, one by one, to ensure you are not planning something criminal?

There is, of course, one small detail that ruins all of this. Surveillance of American citizens without due process or cause is, sadly, illegal. In order for us to do it, then, you will have to grant us, your own constituents, the same immunities that you have been struggling so valiantly to provide to the telecommunications industry. I am sorry to report we have no lobbyists. We have few people willing to type up the laws for you, in order to deliver them onto your desks. We do, however, have the advantage of being voters -- one of the few remaining perks of being a citizen of this nation that is not yet shared by corporations -- and so one can certainly presume that we would look favorably upon any grant of immunity for our own illegal acts, come your next election. And I cannot help but point out that while the Bush administration and telecommunications companies conspired to do something illegal, then demand immunity after the fact, we mere citizens are following a much more responsible path of asking you up front to let us do the deed. Surely, that shows far more respect for the laws of this great nation than either Bush or his compatriots have deigned, does it not?

So, what say you? Can we citizens be granted these extra-legal powers that the telecommunications companies have been demanding, lest they have to face civil suits for violating the laws of the nation? Can we be granted the same illegal powers of espionage that the Bush administration has squeezed from you with barely a squeak, on your parts? Can we violate your privacy with abandon, ignore the laws and the courts, listen in on your most personal phone calls, thumb through your monthly purchases, follow your movements, spy on those that contact you, and if ever caught doing anything that does violate existing law, simply receive immunity from all unfortunate laws that might apply?

You are looking for a deal to be struck in order to condone the violation our privacy and make the illegal legal. Fine; these are our terms. Unless you are terrorists, I think you will find our requests not only fair, but truly patriotic.

There is another matter that needs addressing, which is that it may be necessary at some point to torture one or two of you, just to make very, very certain that you do not know something about terrorists that you perhaps might be hiding. No need to worry about that now; we can address that in separate legislation.

   Your humble citizen,
   Hunter

When we last sawour Republican Superfriends, the political outlook was grim, and the time to fateful Election Day was inexorably counting down! But fear not, dear reader, for the Republican Superfriends have the unlikeliest of allies at their side - Congressional Democrats!

So I read about this FISA re-re-re-recapitulation crap and it sends me over to the edge enough to call.

A staffer named Fallon answered and took my polite message for Steny to grow a pair and oppose this disgraceful get out of jail free BS.

MORE, MORE

After the House defeated the Telecom industry immunity bill, deceptively disguised as an "updated" FISA bill, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer has launched himself "once more unto the breach" in an effort to provide Bush and his cronies with their much-desired immunity bill.  

Hoyer has been the strongest proponent of a compromise in the Democratic leadership and has worked hard to broker a deal on the issue. He often acts as an intermediary between liberal House Democrats unwilling to grant the telecom companies immunity and conservative Senate Republicans and the White House, both of whom will not accept any FISA bill without immunity.

Politico.com

This doesn't sound good:

Telecom companies have presented congressional Democrats with a set of proposals on how to provide immunity to the businesses that participated in a controversial government electronic surveillance program, a House Democratic aide said Wednesday....

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said Wednesday a FISA deal is "still in flux" but he described the latest developments as "promising" and said he hoped to have a solution soon.

House officials declined to discuss the specifics of the proposed immunity language by the telecoms.

Although it remains to be seen if congressional Democrats will accept the telecom companies' proposal, the communication between the two sides signifies that progress is being made.

Have Dem leaders really moved in the discussions from whether to provide amnesty to how to provide it? Beyond that, why in the hell do the telcos have a seat at the negotiating table on this issue at all?

I doubt Congress invited the Mafia to the table when it wrote the RICO  Act. Seems pretty unlikely that there were any drug kingpins at the table when Congress wrote the Continuing Criminal Enterprise statute. But AT&T gets to write this one?

The telcos participated in illegal, warrantless spying--not a "controversial government electronic surveillance program"--in illegal spying. They broke the law. They should have their day in court along with the plaintiffs in the cases against them. But they shouldn't be writing the damn law that lets them off the hook.

Then there's this:

Meanwhile, Senate Select Intelligence Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) has begun circulating a proposal on the FISA bill to all key stakeholders, hoping to break the deadlock, several members and aides also confirmed on Wednesday.

With Hoyer and Rockefeller on the case, it's looking more and more like the Protect AT&T Act is back in business.

(Cross posted from BoydaBloc)

Yesterday, the Kansas Republican Party threw up a post on their official blog, The Kansas Trunkline (Trunkline? Seriously?) that reopens an old wound for the KS GOP:  Their massive, massive failure to make Congresswoman Nancy Boyda's vote to renew and extend FISA somehow akin to letting terrorists sleep in her guest bedroom.

While this is an argument that has been a losing one for the Kansas Republican Party for months at this point, they continue to harp on it in an effort to mislead and misinform the voters of the state of Kansas.  Why?  Because they're so out-of-touch they don't realize it's hurting them.

It just gets better and better with the Bush Buffoons:

Hundreds of employee laptops are unaccounted for at the U.S. Department of State, which conducts delicate, often secret, diplomatic relations with foreign countries, an internal audit has found.

As many as 400 of the unaccounted for laptops belong to the department’s Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program, according to officials familiar with the findings.

The program provides counterterrorism training and equipment, including laptops, to foreign police, intelligence and security forces.

Ironically, the Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program is administered by the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS), which is responsible for the security of the department’s computer networks and sensitive equipment, including laptops, among other duties. It also protects foreign diplomats during visits here....

Auditors found that the department had lost track of $30 million worth of equipment, according to one official, "the vast majority of which . . . perhaps as much as 99 per cent," was laptops.

It's keystone kops all throughout this administration. Yes, human beings are fallible, and we all make mistakes. But the level of incompetence demonstrated by this administration is as mind-boggling as the deliberate malfeseance has been. We can only hope that there weren't really serious breaches of national security this time.

Which of course leads to the obvious conclusion: reason #4,297 for not giving any part of this administration access to the kind of information about the lives of Americans that they constantly seek, particulalry with the lack of Congressional oversight they demand. The combination of incompetence and disregard for the law should have long ago sufficient for this Congress to say "enough."

Dear Keith,

You're one of a handful of Folks Who Get It in this whole FISA goat rope.  Problem is, FISA is a symptom of a much larger problem, and that has received less coverage than the color of your tie, as far as I can find.

This from the ACLU regarding the deal on FISA before the House:

Late Friday night, the ACLU caught wind of a dangerous backroom deal brewing. The "deal" would rush a House vote that would push through a dangerous sellout on government spying powers, possibly in the next few days.

Of course, nobody wants to be spied on, but we're talking about accountability. It's been too easy, too comfortable in the Bush Administration for government to employ American companies to do its dirty work and thus avoid oversight. Somebody has to pay to slow this down from an avalanche of police-state policies to at least a more manageable faucet. It's time to send a message to congress at the link (very long) in the body.

The ACLU is activating its huge membership with this notice (via e-mail):

Dear ACLU Supporter,

Late Friday night, the ACLU caught wind of a dangerous backroom deal brewing. The "deal" would rush a House vote that would push through a dangerous sellout on government spying powers, possibly in the next few days.

We need you to immediately contact your member of Congress. Let your representative know you’re watching and expect him or her to stand firm. That means no immunity for lawbreaking phone and internet companies, and no spying on Americans without a warrant.

Let your member of Congress know you’re watching!

Back in February, the House stood up to President Bush’s fear-mongering tactics by letting the so-called "Protect America Act" expire. This ill-named bill eviscerated the protections of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and violated the constitutional rights of Americans.

This breakthrough victory for civil liberties came only because you and other ACLU activists refused to yield. Because of your emails and phone calls, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer rallied defenders of freedom to hold their ground.

But now, word comes that House leadership may be working hand-in-hand with Senator Jay Rockefeller, the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who has spearheaded efforts to give immunity to law-breaking phone companies that provided mountains of customer data to the government without warrants.

As discussions continue, it’s critical that House leadership avoid buckling to pressure from the White House or Senator Rockefeller at all costs. House leadership -- and every representative -- need to draw a line in the sand by rejecting any compromise that would undo the achievement we fought so hard for in February.

Make no mistake: any "compromise" that is acceptable to Senator Rockefeller and the President will undoubtedly let lawbreakers off the hook and seriously put at risk -- or even end -- lawsuits that may be the only way to get to the bottom of crimes that were committed by phone companies and Bush administration officials.

Demand that the House Stand Firm on FISA!

Let’s make it clear. We won’t tolerate:

• Backroom deals on telecom immunity. Lawsuits may be our last chance to expose the truth about illegal spying activities by telecom companies and the Bush administration.
• Backroom deals that let election year fear-mongering steal our freedom and undermine the rule of law.
• Backroom deals that give Bush new powers to spy on Americans without a warrant.

With your help, we have worked relentlessly to protect freedom in the long-running FISA debate. Now, we need to make sure all that work isn’t undone by backroom deals. So, please, urge your representative to stand firm.

Let’s make sure every member of Congress knows how proud we are that the House has stood its ground and how outraged we will be if our representatives and House leadership reverse themselves now.

Please act quickly,

Caroline Fredrickson
Caroline Fredrickson, Director
ACLU Washington Legislative Office

P.S. Once you’ve emailed your representative, don’t forget to follow up with a phone call.

The ACLU has made it easy. Use those links provided in their e-mail to contact your representative. Follow up with calls to Majority Leader Steny Hoyer at (202) 225-3130, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi at (202) 225-0100 or (202) 225-4965. They're the leaders, it's time they act like it and resist any pressure from the caucus minority Blue Dogs or from the administration on amnesty.

I had a most serendipitous meeting yesterday with Congressman Frank Wolf, Republican of Virginia's 10th congressional district. I recently switched dentists for some major crown and bridge work, and upon arriving at the office near my home in Oak Hill, VA, imagine my surprise to see the "Office of Congressman Frank Wolf" right across the hall from my dentist. So, when I finished my dental work, I stopped in the office to see if I could get clarification on his position on a very important issue: retroactive immunity for the telecoms.

More below the fold...

Pelosi and Hoyer have some tough words about a proposed gas tax holiday.

The gas tax holiday supported by presidential candidates Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) will be dead on arrival in the House, Democrats made plain Thursday.

It was senior aides behind the scenes who described the idea as "DOA," but the party’s topmost leaders were clear that they sided firmly with Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), the only White House contender who opposes suspending the gas tax.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said "there’s no reason to believe that any moratorium on the gas tax would be passed on to the consumer." She has left the measure off the list of energy proposals that she may try to attach to the supplemental Iraq war-spending bill.

Pelosi gave this apparent coup de grâce to the tax holiday just a day after Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said suspending the gas tax would "not be a policy that I would think is particularly positive."

Which is probably good policy, since it's not a particularly responsible solution either to our energy or our economic woes, but it still raises a few questions about their leadership and power.

If they can declare this proposal DOA, why not others? Presumably, a potential break on gas prices would be more popular with voters than, oh, let's say letting the phone companies get off scott free for breaking the law. So it can't really be potential voter discontent in November that's holding them back from killing the Protect AT&T Act, once and for all.

If Pelosi and Hoyer, the Democratic leaders in the House, can kill this proposal before it even reaches them, why in the hell can't they declare telco amnesty DOA and move on, particularly since they already had a vote, and it was rejected by the majority?

They have the power. Why don't they use it? If it helps at all, since it seemed to on the gas tax issue, Sen. Barack Obama is also strongly opposed to amnesty. Maybe they should take their cue from him on this one, too.

The fight to ensure that our Democratic Congress continues to hold its ground and refuses to take Jay Rockefeller's unwise advice to roll over for the Bush Administration on telecom amnesty has been of central importance for many of us in the progressive community.  Kossacks mcjoan and Kagro X have both done an outstanding job keeping this and the intimately related FISA issues front and center in the netroots, and groups like the Courage Campaign have done well in making sure that progressive activists continue to lobby decision-makers to do the right thing.

The Hill today says "Blue Dogs on Hoyer’s FISA leash":

"Our hope is to pass the bipartisan Senate-passed FISA bill," said Michael Steel, spokesman for House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio).

Steel said that would happen if Republicans collected 218 signatures on the petition or came close enough to put pressure on Democratic leaders to act.

Republicans will focus their efforts on Blue Dogs, especially the 21 conservatives who signed a January letter to Pelosi announcing their support for the Senate intelligence bill.

"Any Blue Dog on record as one of the 21 who signed the letter to Pelosi should sign the discharge petition," said Steel.

Hoyer is counting on his strong ties to Blue Dogs and their participation in talks about a compromise to forestall defections.

Vulnerable freshman Democrats and Blue Dogs say the issue demands action.

"Overall, it’s very important," said Rep. Chris Carney (D-Pa.), a freshman member of the Blue Dog Coalition who often votes against his leadership.

Note that Chris Carney is the only freshman to speak up here. And, in fact, some of the supposed vulnerable Dems have, in fact, specifically denied that they are joining with the Republicans in demanding action:

"I am not going to sign it," said Rep. Tim Mahoney (D-Fla.) a member of the Blue Dogs. "I just don’t think it is necessary."

Fellow Blue Dog Rep. Michael Arcuri (D-N.Y.) agreed with Mahoney, saying he would not subvert the rules process by signing the petition.

"I like the House version of FISA better than the Senate bill anyway," added Arcuri.

So the question is, who's doing the tugging here, the frosh Blue Dogs or Hoyer? Obviously, the majority of the Blue Dog coalition can be controlled by leadership. They were back in March when only five of them defected on supporting the much better, telco amnesty-free House bill.

So why in the hell does this puny group of freshman concern trolls have a say in this at all? Why is Hoyer bending over backwards to find a "compromise" that will appease them?

We know it's not because it's a real national security issue. We know it's not because it's going to be an election issue--Bill Foster's victory already proved that. Could it be because Hoyer is trying to help out his Senate buddy Jello Jay in carrying the Protect AT&T Act?

Regarding FISA, I've said it before:

Every time Congressional Dems actually slow down and take stock of the situation ... new revelations arise that should make all Americans who value our freedoms glad they did.

And I'll say it again. While Congressional Democrats have bought us yet more time to consider the folly of Jay Rockefeller's insane drive for Get Out of Jail Free cards for the telecoms, what has the world -- minus Rockefeller, apparently -- learned that should give us pause?

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as "military analysts" whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

Yes, that's right. We found out that -- gasp! -- the "administration" might very well be lying to us!

But not in Jay Rockefeller's world! No, siree! Everything's on the up-and-up there, even though he is occasionally moved to write secret letters to himself (Dick Cheney certainly wasn't reading them) hinting that he thinks something might be wrong.

Everything's hunky-dory, because Jay Rockefeller has had the help of the government in "studying" the situation:

Over the past year, the Senate intelligence committee has examined this issue, along with the need to bring the warrantless surveillance program within the law. We closely studied the facts, the documents and the alternatives to liability for the companies. Ultimately, we concluded that if we subject companies to lawsuits when doing so is patently unfair, we will forfeit industry as a crucial tool in our national defense.

No doubt "the facts, the documents and the alternatives" were presented oh-so-much-more fairly and honestly than were the facts, documents and alternatives presented by the Paid Pentagon Pundits. Yes, the "administration" arranged for ex-generals to lie through their teeth on national television about the run up to war. But they'd never do that to a rich guy, right?

So everything's cool, America! Jay Rockefeller's looking out for you, and he's got trust in his heart.

Ain't he sweet?

Newsweek's Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball report on the coordination between the telcos and the administration on amnesty.

The Bush administration is refusing to disclose internal e-mails, letters and notes showing contacts with major telecommunications companies over how to persuade Congress to back a controversial surveillance bill, according to recently disclosed court documents.

The existence of these documents surfaced only in recent days as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by a privacy group called the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The foundation (alerted to the issue in part by a NEWSWEEK story last fall) is seeking information about communications among administration officials, Congress and a battery of politically well-connected lawyers and lobbyists hired by such big telecom carriers as AT&T and Verizon. Court papers recently filed by government lawyers in the case confirm for the first time that since last fall unnamed representatives of the telecoms phoned and e-mailed administration officials to talk about ways to block more than 40 civil suits accusing the companies of privacy violations because of their participation in a secret post-9/11 surveillance program ordered by the White House....

The recent responses in the Electronic Frontier Foundation lawsuit provide no new information about the administration's controversial post-9/11 electronic surveillance program itself, but they do shed some light on the degree of anxiety within the telecom industry over the litigation generated by the carriers' participation in the secret spying. One court declaration, for example, confirms the existence of notes showing that a telecom representative called an Office of Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) lawyer last fall to talk about "various options" to block the lawsuits, including "such options as court orders and legislation." Another declaration refers to a letter and "four fax cover sheets" exchanged between the telecoms and ODNI over the surveillance matter. Yet another discloses e-mails in which lawyers for the telecoms and the Justice Department "seek or discuss recommendations on legislative strategy."...

So how does the telcos' panic over these potential cases square with the adminstration talking point that the companies did nothing wrong and therefore shouldn't even be threatened with suits? (A specious argument anyway--if they did nothing wrong, they should be happy to have that cleared up in a court of law.) Obviously it doesn't. The telcos that participated knew at the time that they were breaking the law--that's why Qwest didn't participate, and why AT&T and Verizon and the others shouldn't have either. They knew it then and they particularly know it now. Thus their effort  to pull all the levers possible to continuing covering up their actions--and the administrations'.

If one thing in the whole amnesty debate wasn't already clear, this information absolutely crystallizes it. This fight has nothing to do with national security. It has everything to do with megacorporations breaking the law and doing everything in their power to get away with it--including getting advice from the Department of Justice about how to do so!

So, Jello Jay, how does it feel to not only be a puppet of the worst administration in the history of the nation, but also of one of the worst industries in the country? How does it feel to be AT&T's stenographer? Because it's now abundantly apparent that they were the ones writing your bill.

As if that wasn't outrageous enough, the article ends with this:

The debate over a new surveillance authorization is likely to be complicated by figures showing sharp increases in the government's electronic eavesdropping on U.S. citizens. One report filed with the office of the administrator of the U.S. Courts shows that standard wiretaps approved by federal and state courts jumped 20 percent last year, from 1,839 in 2006 to 2,208 in 2007. Later this week another report is expected to also show increases in secret wiretaps and break-ins approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) in terror and espionage cases. But even these secret wiretaps and break-ins—estimated to be about 2,300—tell only part of the story. They don't include other secret methods the government uses to collect personal information on U.S. citizens.

Obviously, the government doesn't need any expanded surveillance powers, they're doing a bang-up job spying within the law. There is no possible justification for a FISA rewrite in the remaining months of Bush's term.