[dave at farber.net: [IP] Justice Dept e-mail on wiretapping program released through FOIA]

[Steve Thompson]

--- Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> ----- Forwarded message from David Farber <dave at farber.net> -----
> From: David Farber <dave at farber.net>
> Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 06:02:18 -0500
[moving along a bit...]
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Justice Dept e-mail on wiretapping program released through
> FOIA
> Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2006 12:22:27 -0800
> From: Jim Warren <jwarren at well.com>
> To: Dave Farber <dave at farber.net>
> 
> From: The National Security Archive [mailto:NSARCHIVE at hermes.gwu.edu] On
> Behalf Of National Security Archive
> Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2006 1:12 PM
> 
> National Security Archive Update, March 9, 2006
> 
> Justice Department e-mail on wiretapping program released through FOIA
[Just a bit further...]

> Former official describes legal defenses as "weak" and "slightly
> after-the-fact,"  Guesses they reflected "VP's philosophy... best
> defense is a good offense."
> 
> For more information:
> Thomas Blanton or Kristin Adair - 202/994-7000
> 
> http://www.nsarchive.org

Sigh.
 
> Washington, D.C., 9 March 2006 - The Justice Department official who
> oversaw national security matters from 2000 to 2003 e-mailed his former
> colleagues after revelation of the controversial warrantless wiretapping
> program in December 2005 that the Department's justifications for the
> program were "weak" and had a "slightly after-the-fact quality" to them,
> and surmised that this reflected "the VP's philosophy that the best
> defense is a good offense," according to documents released through a
> Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the Electronic Privacy
> Information Center and joined by the ACLU and the National Security
> Archive.
> 
> David Kris, the former associate deputy attorney general who now serves
> as chief ethics and compliance officer at Time Warner, e-mailed Justice
> Department official Courtney Elwood on 20 December 2005 his own analysis
> of the controversy, writing that "claims that FISA [the wiretapping
> statute] simply requires too much paperwork or the bothersome marshaling
> of arguments seem relatively weak justifications for resorting to
> Article II power in violation of the statute." The subject line of the
> e-mail was "If you can't show me yours."
> 
> On 22 December, after reading the Department's talking points as
> forwarded by Elwood, Kris commented that the Department's approach
> "maybe... reflects the VP's [Vice President Cheney] philosophy that the
> best defense is a good offense (I don't expect you to comment on that
> :-))."
> 
> On 19 January 2006, Kris wrote Elwood that the Department's white paper
> was "professional and thorough and well written" but that "I kind of
> doubt it's going to bring me around on the statutory arguments."
> 
> The Kris e-mails were the only substantive new documents released by the
> Justice Department yesterday in response to the March 8 deadline ordered
> by U.S. District Court Judge Henry Kennedy in the FOIA lawsuit brought
> by EPIC together with the ACLU and the Archive, seeking the internal
> legal justifications used by the government to carry out the wiretapping
> program.  In three separate letters to the plaintiffs, Justice claimed
> it had fully searched the records of the Office of the Attorney General
> and had made a "full grant" of the FOIA requests, yet most of the
> released material consisted of the previously released white paper and
> transcripts of public appearances by the Attorney General. Justice
> produced not a single record relating to any of the 30-odd
> reauthorizations of the wiretapping program that President Bush has
> publicly stated took place in 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005.

<zzzzZZZ>  Urk!  Wiretapping?  Nah, couldn't be....  <zzzzz>
 
> Justice's Office of Legal Counsel admitted in its response that in the
> two-and-a-half months since the FOIA requests were filed, OLC had only
> completed its search of its unclassified files. "The unclassified files
> are exactly the place where the wiretapping memos are least likely to
> exist," commented Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security
> Archive. "This is a case of looking for your car keys under the street
> lamp even if that's a block away from where you lost them."
> 
> http://www.nsarchive.org

Well, Duh!  What kind of idiot stores memos (dangerous at the best of
times!) concerning wiretapping, and presumably its reasons and possibly
incidental commentary, in unclassified record stores?  What kind of
fucking idiot does that in the Hallowed Halls of Clandestenia, and more
importantly:  what kind of sclerotic retard goes looking for such records
with a bleeping FOIA request?!

That's what I want to know.


Regards,

Steve


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