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The Obama Deception

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Obama Traitor?

Whistleblower: NSA Targeted Journalists, Snooped on All U.S. Communications

Just one day after George W. Bush left office, an NSA whistleblower has revealed that the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program targeted U.S. journalists, and vacuumed in all domestic communications of Americans, including, faxes, phone calls and network traffic.

Russell Tice, a former NSA analyst, spoke on Wednesday to MSNBC host Keith Olbermann. Tice has acknowledged in the past being one of the anonymous sources that spoke with The New York Times for its 2005 story on the government's warrantless wiretapping program.

After that story was published, President Bush said in a statement that only people in the United States who were talking with terrorists overseas would have been targeted for surveillance.

But Tice says, in truth, the spying involved a dragnet of all communications, confirming what critics have long assumed.

"The National Security Agency had access to all Americans' communications," he said. "Faxes, phone calls and their computer communications. ... They monitored all communications."

Tice said the NSA analyzed metadata to determine which communication would be collected. Offering a hypothetical example, he said if the agency determined that terrorists communicate in brief, two-minute phone calls, the NSA might program its systems to record all such calls, invading the privacy of anyone prone to telephonic succinctness.

Tice was involved in only a small part of the project, that involved trying to "harpoon fish from an airplane."

He said he was told to monitor certain groups in order to eliminate them as suspects for more intense targeting. Those groups, he said, were U.S. journalists and news agencies. But rather than excluding the news organizations from monitoring, he discovered that the NSA was collecting the organizations' communications 24 hours a day year round.

"It made no sense," he said.

Tice did not identify the reporters or organizations allegedly targeted.

Olbermann asked if this means there's a file somewhere containing every e-mail and phone conversation these reporters ever had with sources, editors and family members.

"If it was involved in this specific avenue of collection, it would be everything, yes." Tice answered.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/01/nsa-whistleblow.html

Obama administration goes to bat for secrecy

(02-12) 18:16 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- For the second time this week, the Obama administration has gone to court in San Francisco to argue for secrecy in defending a terrorism policy crafted under George W. Bush - in this case, wiretapping that President Obama denounced as a candidate.

In papers filed Wednesday night, the new Justice Department asked a federal judge to suspend action on a suit challenging the wiretapping program, arguing that proceedings would jeopardize national security. Government lawyers also said the administration, not the courts, controls access to classified material at the heart of the case.

In combative tones, the lawyers told Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker that they would ask a federal appeals court to put the case on hold unless he acts by 3 p.m. today.

The dispute involves Walker's Jan. 5 order to allow plaintiffs who say the government illegally wiretapped their phones to read a classified surveillance document that could confirm the assertion and avoid dismissal of their suit. Lawyers for the Obama administration say the judge's decision "presents a clear-cut conflict between the court and the executive branch."

Jon Eisenberg, lawyer for Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, which filed the suit, said, "They have drawn a line in the sand between the executive and the judiciary, saying, 'You do not control these documents, we do.' "

The government inadvertently sent the classified document to Al-Haramain in 2005. It reportedly showed that the now-defunct Islamic charity had been wiretapped before the government designated it a terrorist organization.

Al-Haramain returned the document at the request of the government, which then argued in court that without the document, the group could not prove it had been wiretapped.

Numerous groups brought similar cases after Bush acknowledged that he had ordered the National Security Agency in late 2001 to intercept phone calls and e-mails between U.S. citizens and suspected foreign terrorists without congressional or court approval. But only Al-Haramain's case survives.

Obama attacked the surveillance program as a presidential candidate, promising "no more illegal wiretapping of American citizens" in an August 2007 speech. His future attorney general, Eric Holder, said in June 2008 that Bush had defied federal law by authorizing the program.

The new Justice Department filing, which elaborated on arguments by the same lawyers under the Bush administration, addressed only the need to freeze the lawsuit and keep information secret and did not discuss the legality of the surveillance program. But if the department's position is upheld, Al-Haramain's suit will be dismissed.

Department spokesman Charles Miller confirmed that the brief represented the views of the new administration and its attorney general.

On Monday, a Justice Department lawyer told the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco that the Obama administration endorsed a Bush argument that a suit over the CIA's rendition program endangers state secrets and should be dismissed. The five plaintiffs in that suit say a San Jose subsidiary of Jeppesen Dataplan, a flight-planning company, helped the CIA transport them to foreign nations for torture.

In Al-Haramain's case, the appeals court ruled last year that the organization could not use any information it had seen in the classified document to prove it had been wiretapped. But Walker, an appointee of former President George H.W. Bush, said in his Jan. 5 ruling that the Islamic organization had presented enough evidence from public statements to show that it had probably been a target of the surveillance program.

The judge said he would examine the document in private, then make it available to Al-Haramain lawyers with security clearances so they could oppose dismissal.

The Justice Department contends Walker was wrong on two counts: that the material can be safely disclosed, even in private, and that an alleged surveillance victim can sue without government acknowledgement that wiretapping occurred. The department asked Walker to put the case on hold while it asks the court to consider those issues.

Failing to do so could cause "grave harm to national security," the lawyers wrote.

Eisenberg, Al-Haramain's lawyer, said the filing was "disappointing to a great many people who have had much hope for change."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/13/MN8615T51C.DTL&type=printable

Obama sticks to Bush stance on torture suit

(02-09) 17:30 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- President Obama's Justice Department signaled in a San Francisco courtroom Monday that the change in administrations has not changed the government's position on secrecy and the rights of foreign prisoners - and that lawsuits by alleged victims of CIA kidnappings and torture must be dismissed on national security grounds.

"Judges shouldn't play with fire," Justice Department lawyer Douglas Letter told the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is considering a suit accusing a San Jose company, Jeppesen Dataplan, of arranging so-called extraordinary rendition flights for the CIA.

Once the judges privately examine the government's classified evidence, Letter said, "you will see that this case cannot be litigated."

Letter said the Justice Department's position, previously argued by the administration of former President George W. Bush, has been "thoroughly vetted with appropriate officials of the new administration."

He did not mention extraordinary rendition, the practice of abducting suspected criminals and terrorists and taking them to foreign countries or CIA prisons for interrogation. Although Obama has issued orders banning torture and closing secret CIA prisons, his administration has sent mixed signals on extraordinary rendition and the legitimacy of court challenges.

Obama's nominee for CIA director, Leon Panetta, said last week that he approved of rendition for foreign prosecution or brief CIA detention, but not for extended confinement. Like his Bush administration predecessors, he also said he would require a foreign government to promise not to torture a prisoner.

On Monday, Justice Department spokesman Matt Miller said Attorney General Eric Holder has ordered a review to make sure government secrecy is invoked only to protect national security and not "to hide from the American people information that they have a right to know."

But the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents five men suing Jeppesen for allegedly flying them to foreign torture chambers, said this case was the new administration's chance to live up to its promises.

"Candidate Obama ran on a platform that would reform the abuse of state secrets, but President Obama's Justice Department has disappointingly reneged on this important civil liberties issue," the ACLU's executive director, Anthony Romero, said after the hearing.

ACLU attorney Ben Wizner told the court that the supposedly ultra-secret rendition program is widely known. He noted that Sweden recently awarded $450,000 in damages to one of the plaintiffs, Ahmed Agiza, for helping the CIA transport him to Egypt, where he is still being held and allegedly has been tortured.

"The notion that you have to close your eyes and ears to what the whole world knows is absurd," Wizner said.

Agiza and the other plaintiffs - one now imprisoned in Morocco, one held at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and two who have been released without charges - accuse Jeppesen of colluding in their abduction and torture.

A Council of Europe report in 2007 identified the company, a Boeing Corp. subsidiary, as the CIA's aviation services provider.

The Bush administration persuaded U.S. District Judge James Ware to dismiss the suit last year on the grounds that it would expose state secrets - the CIA's alleged relationship with a private contractor, the agency's methods of interrogating terror suspects, and the alleged cooperation of foreign governments.

Wizner asked the appeals court Monday to reinstate the suit and said Ware should be able to protect any legitimate state secrets.

Letter countered that the core of the case - "their allegation that Jeppesen is complicit in a clandestine foreign intelligence matter" - could not be examined in court without endangering national security.

One member of the three-judge panel seemed skeptical.

"You can say something is secret even when a newspaper reporter has it?" Judge William Canby asked Letter. Even if the men had been snatched from the streets in Missouri, he said, "it would still be a big black hole. The plaintiffs, the judiciary, the Constitution all have to step aside."

Not so, Letter replied - Congress can still scrutinize the program, and judges can review the classified documents that explain the need for secrecy.

Original Link:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/09/BAGS15QB5B.DTL&tsp=1