The Secret

Vice President Richard Bruce Cheney a.k.a. The Grand Vizier had at least one secret group inside the CIA doing his bidding. It now appears that he personally ordered them to lie to Congress about their activities. And while the cover story seems to be a revelation that it was an anti-Al Qaeda assassination ring, that's not exactly as scandalous as this conjecture, should it turn out to be true:

But two former ranking CIA officials have told TIME that there's another equally plausible possibility: The program could have required the Agency to spy on Americans. Domestic surveillance is outside the CIA's purview -– it's usually the FBI's job – and it's easy to see why Cheney would have wanted to keep it from Congress.

Both officials say they were never told what was in the program, and that they're only making calculated guesses. But their theory gibes with other reports, quoting ex-CIA officials, that say the program had to do with intelligence collection, not assassinations.

I've always thought that the warrantless wiretapping was actually political ops, ideally for Karl Rove's perusal. After all, Cheney was in Richard Nixon's Watergate White House and never once admitted that there was anything wrong with the illegal eavesdropping -- only that Nixon should have stonewalled all the way. And it was on Nixon's crime-ridden reelection campaign that young Rove made his bones as a dirty trickster.

If there's any justice, let's get to the bottom of it and air it out for all to see.

If there's any justice, Cheney in the docket.

Friday

So Obama take a slightly nuanced position supporting the FISA compromise but pledging to fight the telco immunity giveaway in the Senate. He admits it's not a perfect bill, but as they say about laws and sausages, it'd not pretty watching them get made.

I'm not terribly torn up about it. Everyone agrees that FISA needs to be updated for new technologies, and everyone in the Constitutionality camp wants to make sure that our government's Executive branch can't violate the rules without oversight from the other two. From what I understand the bill does all that well enough.

The immunity is a sticking point, as wiretaps have been used in the past on civil rights leaders and so-called "enemies" of the particular President of the time (i.e. Nixon). I'd rather the telcos hadn't pitched in when the Bush/Cheney syndicated told them to, but those were heady times and I'm not sure the companies did so enthusiastically.

In any case, rather than blaming Obama for the sins of the GOP Administration, I'd rather get him in office and start the promised transparency January 20, 2009. As President he'll still need to keep some secrets and take steps to protect us all, but it's hard to imagine it will be in the treasonous manner of the mob that still inhabits the White House and associated offices.

While sometimes it's hard to remember, George W. Bush is still in office, and no amount of projecting a President Obama is going to make January 20th come any sooner.

Go Ask Alice

Are you like me on this whole NSA / FISA illegal wiretapping scandal?

Are you too busy to work out the detail but know that of course the Cheney/Bush/Gonzales Administration shredded the Constitution, the only question is whether we'll ever find out how small the pieces were?

Are you just hoping that the "independent" Judiciary and Democratic majority with do the jobs we pay them for, get the truth out and punish, or at the very least stop the Administration for continuing their nefarious ways?

If you're like me, you may get a lot out of this Daily Kos diary by Night Owl where he explains what happened in the Federal Appeals Court where today the huge class action case finally kicked in, Hepting v. AT&T and Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation v. Bush. The diary is an annotation of this original liveblog by Wired.

The government, you know, "our" government, lays out this Catch-22 argument claiming the Executive Branch's absolute right to absolute secrecy, absolutely no oversight, for anything that branch of government says relates to national security.

The President someone working for him can classify anything at any time and he/they can decide that no one, even in the highest levels of the other branches of government, can see it -- even to judge if it should be classified.

Under their argument, We the People, and no other branch representing us, gets to check if someone in their branch is actually abusing their power and breaking the law.

One of the three judges, Judge Harry Pregerson, is eighty-three, was a U.S. Marine Corps First Lieutenant in World War II, and seriously wounded in Okinawa. He's seen a lot of American democracy:

"Who decides whether something is a state secret or not? ... We have to take the word of the members of the executive branch that something is a state secret?"

Garre counters that the courts should give "utmost deference" to the Bush administration.

Judge Pregerson: "What does utmost deference mean? Bow to it?"

Yes. Bow to your President.

Another judge, Judge Hawkins ask if a document provided by an ex-AT&T employee to the Electronic Freedom Foundation (co-plaintiff) is really that secret?

"Every ampersand, every comma is Top Secret?," Hawkins asks.

"This document is totally non-redactable and non-segregable and cannot even be meaningfully described," Bondy answers.

Because if you describe it to someone outside the Administration, then they will have to kill both of you.

And yet another instant classic from today's hearing, the third judge:

The government says the purported log of calls between one of the Islamic charity directors and two American lawyers is classified Top Secret and has the SCI level, meaning that it is "secure Cheshire compartmented information." That designation usually applies to surveillance information.

This allusion to 'Cheshire' inspires the judicial money quote:

Judge McKeown: "I feel like I'm in Alice in Wonderland.".

At the heart of all this evil is, of course, Richard Bruce Cheney. This is info-surveillance porn, power porn. Bureaucratiporn.

The two questions are how the judges will go on this and, if they go against the government, will anything against CheneyBush be enforceable?

Or will the Vice President just cut out the middleman?

And shoot all three judges in the face.