Holder admits megabanks are ‘too big to jail’

Holder admits megabanks are ‘too big to jail’
DARRELL DELAMAIDE
March 7, 2013
Full article:
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/holder-admits-mega-banks-are-too-big-to-jail-2013-03-07

Attorney General Eric Holder, the top U.S. law-enforcement official, finally admitted this week that bank executives truly are above the law and may commit crimes with virtual impunity.

Appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Holder acknowledged under questioning by Republican Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the ranking member, that the megabanks are too big to jail. “I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them,” Holder said.

He continued: “When we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute — if you do bring a criminal charge — it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy. I think that is a function of the fact that some of these institutions have become too large.”

Holder went on to suggest that, until Congress does something about it, the size of these banks will preclude bringing them to justice.

“I think it has an inhibiting influence, impact, on our ability to bring resolutions that I think would be more appropriate,” Holder said. “I think that’s something that we — you all — need to consider.”

John Yoo, totalitarian

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3399.shtml

John Yoo, totalitarian
By Paul Craig Roberts
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Jun 20, 2008

John Yoo stands outside the Anglo-American legal tradition. His views lead to self-incrimination wrung out of a victim by torture. He believes a president of the US can initiate war, even on false pretenses, and then use the war he starts as cover for depriving US citizens of habeas corpus protection.

A US attorney general informed by Yoo’s memos even went so far as to tell the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Constitution does not provide habeas corpus protection to US citizens.

Yoo’s animosity to US civil liberties made him a logical choice for appointment to the Bush Regime’s Department of Justice [sic], but his appointment as a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, shatters that university’s liberal image.

Habeas corpus is a centuries-old British legal reform that stopped authorities from arbitrarily throwing a person into a dungeon and leaving him there forever without presenting charges in a court of law. Without this protection, there can be no liberty.

Yoo is especially adamant that "enemy combatants" have no rights to challenge the legality of their detentions by US authorities before a federal judge. Yoo would have us believe that the detainees at Guantanamo, for example, are all terrorists who were attacking Americans.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The question is whether any of the detainees are "enemy combatants." Yoo would have it so because the president says it is so. As the president has already decided, what is the sense in presenting evidence to a judge? For Yoo, accusation by the executive branch is the determination of guilt.

But what we know about the detainees is that many are hapless individuals who were captured by warlords and sold to the Americans for the bounty that the US government offered for "terrorists."

Some of the other detainees could be Taliban who were engaged in an Afghan civil war that had nothing whatsoever to do with the US. The Taliban were not fighting the US until the US invaded Afghanistan and began attacking the Taliban. This would make Taliban detainees prisoners of war captured by invading US troops. How POWs can be tortured, denied Geneva Convention protections, and tried by military tribunals without the US government being in violation of US and international law is inexplicable.

Suppose you were a traveling businessman grabbed by a tribe and sold to the Americans. Would you consider it just to be detained in Gitmo, undergoing whatever abuse is dished out, for five or six years of your life, or forever, without family knowing what has become of you?

Perhaps the greatest injustice was done to John Walker Lindh, an American citizen who, like Americans of a previous generation who fought in the Spanish Civil War, was fighting for the Taliban in the Afghan civil war against the Northern Alliance. Suddenly the Americans entered the Afghan civil war on the side of the Northern Alliance. Lindh was captured and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

This kind of punishment is a new form of tyranny. It is not law, and it is not justice.

Lindh had no opportunity to withdraw once the US entered on the opposite side. The only point of treating Lindh as if he were some dangerous traitor was to demonstrate that American citizens can be treated to a Kafkaesque experience and have the American public accept it.

Yoo stands for the maximum amount of injustice, illegality and unconstitutionality that can be committed in the name of the national security state.

No American security was at stake in Afghanistan or in Iraq, and none is at stake in Iran today. The Bush Regime may be creating security problems for Americans in the future by fomenting hatred of Americans among Muslims.

This security problem is insignificant compared to the threat to our liberty and freedom posed by John Yoo and his Republican Federalist Society colleagues who are committed to tyranny in the name of "energy in the executive."

Writing on the Wall Street Journal editorial page on June 17, [The Supreme Court Goes to War], Yoo denounced the five Supreme Court justices who defended the US Constitution against arbitrary "energy in the executive."

Yoo believes that the Constitution and liberty rank below "the nation’s security." Fortunately, Yoo wrote, a fix is at hand. "The advancing age of several justices" means that President McCain can give us more judges like Roberts (no relation) and Alito who will make certain that mere civil liberties don’t get in the way of arbitrary executive power justified by national security.

In a Yoo-McCain regime, the terrorists you will have to fear are those in your own government, against whom you will have no protection whatsoever.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider's Account of Policymaking in Washington; Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice.

Patriots taped Rams before Super Bowl

http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/playoffs07/news/story?id=3227245

Saturday, February 2, 2008
Report: Source claimed Patriots taped Rams before Super Bowl
ESPN.com news services

An unnamed source has claimed a New England Patriots employee secretly videotaped the St. Louis Rams' pre-game walkthrough the day before Super Bowl XXXVI, the Boston Herald reported Saturday.

According to the report, an unnamed source close to the team during the 2001 season said that following the Patriots' walkthrough at the Louisiana Superdome, a member of the team's video staff stayed behind and taped the Rams' walkthrough -- a non-contact, no-pads practice at reduced speed in which a team goes through its plays.

The cameraman was not asked to identify himself or produce a press pass and rode the media shuttle back to the Patriots' hotel after it was over, a source told the Herald. It is not known what became of the tape afterwards, or whether the cameraman made the tape on his own initiative or at someone else's instruction, according to the report.

Asked about the report, Patriots media relations Stacey James said "The coaches have no knowledge of it," according to the Herald.

The next day, the Patriots upset the favored Rams 20-17 for their first Super Bowl championship. New England will play the New York Giants in Super Bowl XLII on Sunday, in a bid to become the first NFL team to finish a season 19-0.

Former St. Louis Rams quarterback Kurt Warner, currently with the Arizona Cardinals, told ESPN.com investigative reporter Mike Fish that if the league has heard those claims, he's surprised the NFL has not spoken to former Patriots video department employee Matt Walsh. He said if Walsh or any other source has information, it should be investigated.

Walsh, a former Patriots video assistant, has suggested to ESPN.com that he has information that could have exposed the Patriots prior to the NFL catching New England taping the New York Jets' defensive signals during the 2007 season opener. The Patriots were fined $750,000 and lost a first-round draft pick as punishment.

"If I had a reason to want to go public, or tell a story, I could have done it before it even broke," Walsh told ESPN.com. "I could have said everything rather than having [Jets head coach Eric] Mangini be the one to bring it out."

"If they're doing a thorough investigation -- they didn't contact me," Walsh told ESPN.com. "So draw your own conclusions. Maybe they felt they didn't need to. Maybe the league feels they got satisfactory answers from everything the Patriots sent them."

Walsh, 31, now an assistant golf pro at the Ka'anapli Golf Resort in Lahaina, Hawaii, worked for the Patriots from 1996 until the winter of 2002-03 when he was fired. He has hinted to ESPN.com that he has information that could be damaging to both the league and the Patriots, but declined to make it available, saying that it could possibly be seen as stolen property.

Walsh said he is fearful of potential legal action against him by either the league or Patriots if he details what he knows. He has refused to provide evidence of potential wrongdoing unless ESPN agreed to pay his legal fees related to his involvement in the story, as well as an indemnification agreement that would cover any damages found against him in court. ESPN denied his requests.

Friday, Senator Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said he had written NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, seeking an explanation as to why evidence in the NFL's investigation of the Patriots videotaping was destroyed.

"I am very concerned about the underlying facts on the taping, the reasons for the judgment on the limited penalties and, most of all, on the inexplicable destruction of the tapes," Specter said in the letter to Goodell.

Specter, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the matter could put the league's antitrust exemption at risk. In a phone interview with The New York Times, which first reported Specter's interest in Spygate, he said the committee at some point will call on Goodell to address the antitrust exemption as well as the destruction of the tapes.

Goodell, in his previously scheduled news conference Friday from Phoenix, said, "I am more than willing to speak with the senator. There are very good explanations why the tapes were destroyed by our staff -- there was no purpose for them."

There were six tapes, according to Goodell -- some from the 2007 preseason, and the rest from 2006. He said he had them destroyed because he was confident that the Patriots had turned over all of the tapes and notes the NFL had requested in its investigation. He also said they were destroyed in order to prevent leaks to the media -- as some footage from one of the tapes was shortly after the story broke.

"We wanted to take and destroy that information," Goodell said. "They may have collected it within the rules, but we couldn't determine that. So we felt that it should be destroyed."

Patriots coach Bill Belichick had little to add on the subject.

"It's a league matter," he said Friday during his news conference. "I don't know anything about it."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

AT&T gave feds access to all Web, phone traffic

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2004001159_spying08.html

Thursday, November 8, 2007
AT&T gave feds access to all Web, phone traffic, ex-tech says
By Ellen Nakashima
The Washington Post

WASHINGTON — His first inkling that something was amiss came in summer 2002, when he opened the door to admit a visitor from the National Security Agency (NSA) to an AT&T office in San Francisco.

"What the heck is the NSA doing here?" Mark Klein, a former AT&T technician, said he asked himself.

A year or so later, he stumbled upon documents that, he said, show the agency gained access to massive amounts of e-mail, Web search and other Internet records of more than a dozen global and regional telecom providers. AT&T allowed the agency to hook into its network and, according to Klein, many of the other telecom companies probably knew nothing about it.

Klein will be on Capitol Hill today to share his story in the hope it will persuade Congress not to grant legal immunity to telecommunications firms that helped the government in its warrantless anti-terrorism efforts.

Klein, 62, said he may be the only person in a position to discuss firsthand knowledge of an important aspect of the Bush administration's domestic surveillance. He is retired, so he isn't worried about losing his job. He carried no security clearance, and the documents in his possession were not classified, he said. He has no qualms about "turning in," as he put it, the company where he worked for 22 years until he retired in 2004.

"If they've done something massively illegal and unconstitutional — well, they should suffer the consequences," Klein said.

In an interview this week, he alleged that the NSA set up a system that vacuumed up Internet and phone-call data from ordinary Americans with the help of AT&T and without obtaining a court order. Contrary to the government's depiction of its surveillance program as aimed at overseas terrorists, Klein said, much of the data sent through AT&T to the NSA was purely domestic. Klein said he thinks the NSA was analyzing the records for usage patterns and for content.

He said the NSA built a special room in San Francisco to receive data streamed through an AT&T Internet room containing "peering links," or major connections to other telecom providers. Other so-called secret rooms reportedly were constructed at AT&T sites in Seattle, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Jose, Calif.

Klein's documents and his account form the basis of one of the first lawsuits filed against the telecom companies after the government's warrantless-surveillance program was disclosed by The New York Times in December 2005.

Claudia Jones, an AT&T spokeswoman, said she had no comment on Klein's allegations. "AT&T is fully committed to protecting our customers' privacy. We do not comment on matters of national security," she said.

The NSA and the White House also declined to comment.

Klein is urging Congress not to block Hepting v. AT&T, a class-action suit pending in federal court in San Francisco, and 37 other lawsuits charging carriers with illegally collaborating with the NSA program. He and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed Hepting v. AT&T in 2006, are urging key lawmakers to oppose a pending White House-endorsed immunity provision that effectively would wipe out the lawsuits. The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to take up the measure today.

In summer 2002, Klein was working in an office responsible for Internet equipment when an NSA representative arrived to interview a management-level technician for a special, secret job.

The job entailed building a "secret room" in another AT&T office 10 blocks away, he said. By coincidence, in October 2003, Klein was transferred to that office. He asked a technician about the secret room on the sixth floor, and the technician told him it was connected to the Internet room a floor above. The technician handed him wiring diagrams.

"That was my 'aha' moment," Klein said. "They're sending the entire Internet to the secret room."

The diagram showed splitters glass prisms that split signals from each network into two identical copies. One copy fed into the secret room. The other proceeded to its destination, he said.

"This splitter was sweeping up everything, vacuum-cleaner-style," he said. "The NSA is getting everything. These are major pipes that carry not just AT&T's customers but everybody's."

One of Klein's documents listed links to 16 entities, including Global Crossing, a large provider of voice and data services in the United States and abroad; UUNet, a large Internet provider now owned by Verizon; Level 3 Communications, which provides local, long-distance and data transmission in the United States and overseas; and more familiar names, such as Sprint and Qwest. It also included data exchanges MAE-West and PAIX, or Palo Alto Internet Exchange, facilities where telecom carriers hand off Internet traffic to each other.

"I flipped out," he said. "They're copying the whole Internet. There's no selection going on here. Maybe they select out later, but at the point of handoff to the government, they get everything."

Qwest has not been sued because of media reports last year that said the company declined to participate in an NSA program to build a database of domestic phone-call records out of concern that it may have been illegal. What the documents show, Klein said, is that the NSA apparently was collecting several carriers' communications, probably without their consent.

Another document showed that the NSA installed in the room a Narus semantic traffic analyzer, which Klein said indicated the NSA was doing content analysis.

Steve Bannerman, Narus' marketing vice president, said the NarusInsight system can track a communication's origin and destination, as well as its content. He declined to comment on AT&T's use of the system.

Klein said he went public after President Bush defended the NSA's surveillance program as limited to collecting phone calls between suspected terrorists overseas and people in the United States. Klein said the documents show that the scope was much broader.

Details on other secret sites were provided by The Seattle Times archives.

Lie, Lie, Lie, Lie, Lie, Lie: Gonzales' Top Six Fibs

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003920.php

Lie, Lie, Lie, Lie, Lie, Lie: Gonzales' Top Six Fibs
By Paul Kiel
August 17, 2007

The verdict is clear: Alberto Gonzales is the lying-est attorney general in recent history. "I don't trust you," Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) told him last month. Ranking member Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) sounded him out for his "lack of credibility." "He tells the half truth, the partial truth and everything but the truth," said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said that Gonzales. “He’s one sneaky, lying S.O.B., to put it bluntly" is Rep. David Obey's (D-WI) frank take.

But even though we've been cataloging the troubles, and Gonzales' dwindling credibility, at the Justice Department for the past several months, we hadn't yet done a rundown. So we've collected below what are, as far as we can tell, Gonzales' six most brazen public untruths.

To do this, we were forced to constrain the endeavor. Gonzales' amazingly faulty memory is clearly cause for strong suspicion -- but his countless "I don't recall"s have not yet been proven to be dishonest. And there have been a stream of dubious statements -- such as that he'd never fire a U.S. attorney for political reasons or his insistence that they were fired for "performance" reasons -- countered by weighty circumstantial evidence. But we've set a high bar. Certainly we expect our little list to lengthen in the future as more evidence is produced -- and as Gonzales continues to speak publicly.

We arrived at the six statements below. Some can be judiciously described as lies, i.e. apparently consciously false statements made with the intent to deceive. Some are better described as "wily" prevarications, or as literally true statements made with the intent to deceive or cover up. (I count #2-5 in the former category, #1 and #6 in the latter.)

Yesterday, Sen. Leahy requested that the Justice Department's inspector general investigate five public statements that Gonzales had made -- the same five statements that we chose as #1-5 in our tally. Certainly these statements will play a significant role in impeachment proceedings, should Democrats decide to go that route.

Enjoy:

1) “The disagreement that occurred, and the reason for the visit to the hospital, Senator, was about other intelligence activities. It was not about the terrorist surveillance program that the president announced to the American people.”
-- 7/24/07 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee

The parsing in this testimony was so awkward, so evidently legalistic, that Gonzales has stood by the testimony, apparently confident that the inherent dishonesty in the distinction did not rise to the level of perjury. He’s since explained that his language “may have created confusion,” but that the “terrorist surveillance program” only referred to a narrow and uncontroversial surveillance activity, and that the dispute which led to his infamous trip to John Ashcroft’s hospital bed was about other activities -- albeit activities that others, like FBI Director Robert Mueller, have consistently viewed as part of a single program. To Mueller apparently, Gonzales' parsing is needlessly misleading.

2) “The consensus in the room from the congressional leadership [the gang of eight] was that we should continue the activities, at least for now, despite the objections of Mr. Comey. There was also consensus that it would be very, very difficult to obtain legislation without compromising this program, but that we should look for a way ahead. It is for this reason that within a matter of hours Andy Card and I went to the hospital."

"I just wanted to put in context for this committee and the American people why Mr. Card and I went. It's because we had an emergency meeting in the White House Situation Room, where the congressional leadership had told us, "Continue going forward with this very important intelligence activity.”
-- 7/24/07 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee

There were a couple questionable (and contested) assertions in this one. Remember the situation: Deputy Attorney General James Comey was serving as attorney general, since Ashcroft had fallen ill. After Comey refused to reauthorize the administration's warrantless surveillance program, Gonzales and Andrew Card went to the hospital to try and convince Ashcroft to overrule him. FBI Director Robert Mueller's notes on the hospital showdown have since shown that he found Ashcroft to be "feeble, barely articulate, clearly stressed" after the encounter.

First and foremost is Gonzales’ bizarre cover story that admits all of the facts but insists on another interpretation of them. Gonzales claims that he did not go to the hospital room to “take advantage of a very sick man,” as Comey put it in his testimony – no, he went to inform Ashcroft of the congressional leadership’s decision. Of course, he admitted in his testimony that he came to Ashcroft’s hospital room with the reauthorization form in his hand (as Comey had testified). There's no other interpretation than that the reason he went to the hospital room was to have Ashcroft reauthorize the program. So what’s the difference? It’s a matter of emphasis, you might say. According to Gonzales, he was just acting on the will of Congress.

Except he wasn’t. Three people present at the meeting told The Washington Post that the briefing was solely on operational details and not on the legal basis for the program. So when Gonzales says that they wanted to continue the program "despite the objections of Mr. Comey," he's being dishonest. The lawmakers didn't know about Comey's objections. Ex-Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-ND) and Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) have both said unequivocally that the meeting as Gonzales describes it never happened.

3) "I was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussions about what was going on."
-- A March 13th press conference on the U.S. attorney firings.

After internal Justice Department emails and memos demonstrated that this was false, Gonzales explained in a March 27th interview: “What I meant was that I have not been involved, was not involved in the deliberations over whether or not United States attorneys should resign.” Kyle Sampson testified two days later to Congress that Gonzales had been periodically updated on the firing process over the course of two years.

4) "I haven't done -- I haven't talked to witnesses because of the fact that I haven't wanted to interfere with this investigation and department investigations."”
-- 4/19/07 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee

“….as I've indicated, I have not gone back and spoken directly with Mr. Sampson and others who are involved in this process, in order to protect the integrity of this investigation and the investigation of the Office of Professional Responsibility and the Office of Inspector General.”
-- 5/11/07 testimony before the House Judiciary Committee

As Monica Goodling testified, in a private conversation approximately a week after Congress requested to interview her about the firings, Gonzales recounted to her his memory of how the U.S. attorney firings had occurred. He then wanted to know if she had “any reaction” to his recollection. Gonzales later testified that the conversation was “not to shape her testimony” -- it was “in the context of trying to console and reassure an emotionally distraught woman that she had done something wrong.”

5) “The track record established over the past three years has demonstrated the effectiveness of the safeguards of civil liberties put in place when the act was passed. There has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse.”
-- 4/27/05 testimony before the House intelligence committee

In fact, as reported by The Washington Post (http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003635.php), FBI reports to the attorney general had shown a number of instances of improper surveillance or searches. Gonzales later testified that his testimony had been truthful because these were not “intentional” abuses of the Patriot Act.

6) “…[L]et me publicly sort of preempt, perhaps, a question you're going to ask me, and that is, I am fully committed, as the administration's fully committed, to ensure that, with respect to every United States attorney position in this country, we will have a presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed United States attorney.”
-- 1/18/07 testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee

What Gonzales didn’t tell Congress is that his chief of staff Kyle Sampson had been scheming for months to circumvent the Senate, via an obscure provision of the Patriot Act that allowed Gonzales to appoint interim U.S. attorneys indefinitely. Sampson wanted to use the authority to keep Karl Rove’s former aide Timothy Griffin in place as Little Rock’s U.S. attorneys, despite opposition from Arkansas’ Democratic senators. He continued to tout the idea until as late as December, even communicating the strategy to lawyers in the White House counsel’s office.

In subsequent testimony, Gonzales admitted to being aware of Sampson’s scheming, but said he’d “never liked” the idea and had never considered it. Sampson, however, testified that Gonzales had considered it, and had only rejected the idea as late as January, shortly before he made the remarks above, and after senators had started asking questions about the U.S. attorney firings. So Gonzales' statement may have been literally true at the time he said it, but his chief of staff had certainly been unaware of such a commitment earlier that same month.

Gonzales appears to have used the same line about being committed to having a Senate-confirmed U.S. attorney a month earlier in a private conversation with Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR). Of course, back then, Sampson was still avidly pushing his scheme since Gonzales had not rejected it -- a revelation that led Pryor (one of the few Democrats to have supported Gonzales' confirmation as attorney general) to announce on the Senate floor that Gonzales had "lied" to him.

TOPICS: Alberto Gonzales

Gonzales Digs a Deeper Hole

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1646714,00.html

Tuesday, Jul. 24, 2007
Gonzales Digs a Deeper Hole
By Jay Newton-Small/Washington

Just when it seemed that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' reputation on Capitol Hill couldn't possibly get much worse, he showed up Tuesday for yet another hearing. And as with so many of his recent appearances before Congress, his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee raised a lot more troubling questions than it answered — not just about his own conduct of and honesty about the U.S. Attorney firings, but also about the Administration's domestic intelligence gathering programs.

That new wrinkle stemmed from Gonzales' testy exchange with Senator Arlen Specter, the panel's top Republican. Specter opened up with former Deputy Attorney General James Comey's testimony to the panel in May over Gonzales' actions while serving as White House Counsel. Comey had alleged that Gonzales tried to convince an ailing Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was in the hospital recovering from gallbladder surgery, to sign off on Bush's warrantless wiretapping program. "There are no rules saying he couldn't take back authority," Gonzales said, trying to explain that they had hoped Ashcroft might be able to sign off on an intelligence program due to expire the next day, a program that Comey as acting AG had refused to renew.

But what Specter really wanted to know was how that meeting squared with Gonzales' previous testimony that there had been no serious internal disagreements over the program. Gonzales seemed to believe he had a simple explanation. "The disagreement that occurred was about other intelligence activities, and the reason for the visit to the hospital was about other intelligence activities," the Attorney General said. "It was not about the terrorist surveillance program that the president announced to the American people."

Both Specter and later Senator Chuck Schumer latched onto Gonzales' puzzling comment. Schumer in particular brought up several examples where in sworn testimony Gonzales has named the Terrorist Surveillance Program as the one at issue during the hospital visit to Ashcroft's room. Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy then ordered a complete review of Gonzales' statements to the committee. "This is such a significant and major point," Leahy said. "There's a discrepancy here in sworn testimony and we're going to find out who's telling the truth."

Specter later circled back to Gonzales on the matter, warning him: "My suggestion to you is you review your testimony to find out if your credibility has been breached to the point of being actionable," Specter said. The maximum penalty for being caught lying to Congress is five years in prison and a fine of $250,000 per count. Specter wryly noted to reporters during a break that there is a jail in the Capitol complex.

Senator Jay Rockefeller, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, who was involved in the briefings at the time of the hospital visit, said the so-called Gang of Eight — the eight top bipartisan members of Congress on intelligence issues — were not briefed about any sunset the program was facing, as Gonzales claimed. He also emphatically refuted Gonzales' statements that there was more than one program under discussion at the time and that the Gang of Eight had agreed the program was so important that if it had been allowed to lapse they were considering emergency legislation.

"Once again he's making up something to protect himself and creating situations that never happened," Rockefeller said, adding that "based on what I know about it, I'd have to say" Gonzales has committed perjury.

Gonzales' woes actually began even before he was sworn in. He took his seat as a protestor held a pink banner reading "Impeach" behind him and to yells of "Impeach him!" from protesters in the room, who were quickly escorted out. Specter threatened the appointment of a special prosecutor to look into the firings of the eight U.S. Attorneys last year and a Senate "trial" to hold in contempt those Administration officials refusing to comply with Senate subpoenas. Then Leahy gaveled in the proceedings, saying "the Attorney General has lost the confidence of the Congress and the American people." ( When asked about Specter's threat of holding a Senate trial on contempt citations, Senator Trent Lott, the No. 2 Senator Republican, said he didn't "believe that's necessary," adding he intended to speak with Specter about the issue.)

In his opening statement, Gonzales underlined all the important work the department is still engaged in, highlighting its hunt for sexual predators and its role in the war on terror. But when asked by Senator Herb Kohl, a Wisconsin Democrat, if his presence is more detrimental than helpful Gonzales said: "Ultimately, I have to decide is it better for me to leave: I've decided to stay and fix the problem and that's what I'm doing," he said over guffaws from hearing attendees. "We're bringing in good experienced people. We've changed policies, we've been made aware with some of the problems with our policies."

Much of Gonzales' time was spent telling the committee he couldn't remember, wasn't up to date or wasn't at liberty to discuss the details on everything from the department's controversial settlement with the makers of Oxycotin, a drug believed responsible for dozens of deaths and his consideration of death penalty cases. to his involvement in drafting U.S. torture guidelines while working at the White House and why he apparently lied to a Senate panel over President George W. Bush's warrantless wiretapping programs.

When Specter asked Gonzales whether the President has the right to prohibit the Department of Justice from pursuing Congressional charges of contempt against former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten — the House Judiciary Committee tomorrow is expected to issue two contempt citations for their refusal, citing executive privilege, to comply with subpoenas to testify — Gonzales had a short lawyerly response. "I am recused of speaking on that matter due to the ongoing investigation," he said.

Later, when Senator Diane Feinstein, a California Democrat, asked how many names were on the list of U.S. Attorneys to be fired that he approved, he said he couldn't recall. "After all this time and all of the investigations into this, I find it hard to believe you can't remember," Feinstein quipped. "I'll have to get back to you on that," Gonzales said.

He couldn't remember answers for even the rare friendly inquisitors. After Senator Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, tried to prod him about how long Comey was in Ashcroft's room — hinting that maybe he hadn't really been present for much of the conversation — Gonzales replied, "I don't remember."

Beast of the Month - June 2007

Beast of the Month - June 2007
Alberto Gonzales, Attorney General

"I yam an anti-Christ... "
John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) of The Sex Pistols, "Anarchy in the UK"

"Senator, that I don't recall remembering."
Alberto Gonzales before the Senate Judiciary Committee

As June begins, the smell of justice is in the air. After all, the noteworthy celebrity villain Paris Hilton is finally going to jail for her crimes against humanity.

Okay, maybe Paris isn't the most deserving candidate to stick up for, but with all the late-night talk show monologue snickering, somebody has to. Granted, the idea of Ms. Hilton's simple life turning into a Chained Heat lesbian prison film (perhaps featuring Sybil Danning in a cameo) certainly has its appeal, at least as a "reality" show or "home" video. But isn't all this focus on bad little Paris just making her a convenient scapegoat while the more substantive crimes of the Bush Administration continue to go unpunished? For example, is Paris a worse scofflaw than Alberto Gonzales, the Attorney General and The Konformist Beast of the Month?

To George W. Bush, a guy who loves giving out pet nicknames, Gonzales is referred to a Fredo, a fairly insulting reference to the incompetent member of The Godfather Corleone clan. Of course, considering Shrub's dismal record, he appears more suited for the Fredo name (although he must compete with his brother Neil for the title.) Others, most notably the Website Buzzflash.com, have given Gonzales the more deserving moniker of Consigliere, in honor of Robert Duvall's Tom Hagen in the Puzo-penned, Copolla-directed classic. He is, after all, Bush's little fixer of legal problems, a position he's held since 1996 when he got Bush off serving jury duty. (Shrub made a big show on how he was eager to serve on a jury like a "common man" - until he found out it was a drunk-driving case, which would require him to reveal his then covered-up history of driving smashed. In came Fredo, who argued that, as Governor, he may later be asked to pardon in the case, which would put him in conflict-of-interest if he sat on the jury.) Personally, we at The Konformist like to refer to Gonzales as "Sanjaya" since, whenever he opens his mouth, we wonder why he hasn't got his ass booted out of the DOJ already.

But unlike Sanjaya on American Idol, Gonzales is still the Attorney General because his miserable performance is precisely what Bush wants. For example, in April before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gonzales, in the most embarrassing spectacle in front of the esteemed group since Clarence Thomas told Long Dong Silver jokes, used some version of "I don't recall" 71 times in testimony. At the time, Gonzales seemed dazed and confused, perhaps because conventional wisdom was he soon would be out of a job over the Attorney Firing Scandal (which prompted his testimony in the first place.) Even GOP Senators were publicly urging him to throw in the towel. Cut to May, and in front of the House Judiciary Committee, Gonzales, though still with a memory loss resembling Guy Pearce in Memento, seemed confident, relaxed, even a tad cocky with a smirk on his face. What caused the change? More than likely, Bush told him he wasn't going to dump him, perhaps because his unconvincing obfuscations have successfully hampered the Congressional investigations surrounding Bush.

Unsurprisingly, though the support of Fredo by Bush has apparently become even stronger, the evidence of corruption, malfeasance and abuse of power by Gonzales has become, incredibly, even greater since his April testimony. The biggest bombshell in May: testimony from former Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey that Gonzales and then Bush's Chief of Staff Andrew Card attempted to secretly visit then Attorney General John Ashcroft while he laid ill, medicated and disoriented in a hospital, in order to reauthorize a secret wiretapping program that Comey, then acting AG, refused to sign off on as legal. Only by rushing to Ashcroft's hospital with FBI Director Robert Mueller was this end-around stopped. As Comey put it: "I was very upset. I was angry. I thought I had just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man..."

This revelation is stunning on three counts. One, it shows that Ashcroft, for all his far-right political leanings, scary religious fundamentalism and point-man status for ramrodding the PATRIOT Act through Congress, was actually a stronger defender of civil liberties than Gonzales, which may have had something to do with his "resignation" in 2004. (Like Comey, Ashcroft was opposed to the warrantless wiretapping program.) Two, it shows that members of the Bush Team literally use gangster-type methods to get what they want. (No word if Gonzales and Card were going to leave a horse's head in Ashcroft's bed to clinch an offer he couldn't refuse.) And third, it hints at evidence that the NSA wiretapping program, already blatantly illegal with what is known about it, was at one point even more contemptuous of the law than what has been reported.

After the showdown, changes were made in the program that allowed Ashcroft to sign off on it. What were these changes? Both the New York Times and Washington Post have hinted at the likely answer, perhaps because, as has been the case over the Bush years, they have the evidence already but have decided to hide it from the public in collusion with the political establishment. To its usual credit, The World Socialist Web Site was explicit about the logical explanation in a May 18 article. The smoking gun appears to be Mueller's involvement in the dispute, who, like Ashcroft and Comey, considered resigning over the standoff. While Comey and even Ashcroft had every reason to take umbrage at the Bush Mob's defiance of their legal opinion, why would the FBI Director, no civil libertarian, give a rat's ass? The most plausible explanation: this was a turf battle, and while Mueller may not care about privacy rights, he DID care about protecting his FBI. More explicitly, the NSA historically has only been involved in international surveillance, while the FBI held domain in domestic spying. It seems Occam's Razor would suggest that, at least until the program was modified under protest by Ashcroft, Comey and Mueller, the warrantless NSA spying program involved communications completely within the United States. Of course, since Gonzales is now the man in the DOJ signing off on any programs, there is good reason to suspect that the secret spying program involves such communications again.

Of course, the NSA spying program is merely one of many outrages involving the Bush Team where Gonzales is a pivotal person. Among his most notorious hits:

* ATTORNEY FIRING SCANDAL: Eight US Attorneys were dumped from the DOJ last December. (One of the eight, David Iglesias, was the inspiration for the Tom Cruise character in the film A Few Good Men, who egged on Jack Nicholson's classic line, "You can't handle the truth!") At least 26 attorneys have been considered for firing since 2005, with three others receiving pink slips. Though it's customary for mass replacements in attorneys to occur at the start of a new administration, widespread mid-term firings are unprecedented, with only two in the previous quarter century for misconduct. While attorneys are appointments that can be hired and fired at will, in this case, it appears the vast majority were fired for blatantly partisan purposes. Specifically, four of the eleven fired were involved in key target areas for so-called "voter fraud" claims, under Karl Rove's cynical plan to use bogus election fraud investigations to suppress minority voters. The four were unwilling to press charges in the cases, and lost favor in the Bush Team for this. Meanwhile, five were involved in high-profile investigations of GOP figures, most notably Carol Lam, who nailed Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham for bribery. An email by Gonazales' chief of staff Kyle Sampson revealed that "loyal Bushies" were to replace the ousted prosecutors. All told, the scandal reveals a grotesque attempt to politicize the DOJ, with strong evidence of both voter fraud and obstruction of justice by the Bush gang. Further obstruction was done by Gonzales himself, who in a March 13 press conference declared about the scandal: "I never saw documents. We never had a discussion about where things stood." Ten days later, it was revealed he attended an hour-long meeting on November 27 where he approved a detailed plan for the mass firings. Meanwhile, in his testimony before the Senate, he claimed he left the decisions on firings to his staff, but internal emails later revealed he personally urged the ousting of Ms. Lam. Faced with evidence of perjury, even Gonzales has admitted: "incomplete information was communicated or may have been communicated to Congress."

* TORTURE & GENEVA CONVENTION VIOLATIONS: Gonzales authored a January 2002 memo that argued against the Geneva Convention applying to alleged Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters held in detention, declaring "a new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitation on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders some of its provisions quaint." This memo led directly to the torture and abuse that followed in places such as Camp X-Ray and Abu Ghraib.

* REJECTION OF HABEAS CORPUS RIGHTS: In January, Gonzales, showing flawless logic, stated before the Senate Judiciary Committee: "There is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution. There is a prohibition against taking it away." This drew a stunned response from GOP Senator Arlen Specter: "Wait a minute. The Constitution says you can’t take it away, except in the case of rebellion or invasion. Doesn’t that mean you have the right of habeas corpus, unless there is an invasion or rebellion?" Gonzales didn't budge on his opinion. With the shameful passage of the Military Commissions Act last year, which allows those labeled "unlawful enemy combatants" to be stripped of habeas corpus, his translation of Constitutional rights is more than a mere philosophical disagreement.

* GOVERNMENT SECRECY: Gonzales drafted Executive Order 13233 (issued by Bush on November 1, 2001, soon after 9/11) placed limits on Freedom of Information Act access to records of former presidents. He also fought to keep Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force documents secret. In other words, while he's been rapidly invading the privacy of the American public, Gonzales has been pushing more secrecy for the Bush Mob.


Based on the above, there's no reason he should still be the Attorney General, but it appears, contrary to recent conventional wisdom, he's not going anywhere. After all, Bush is standing by him, and since Fredo is, above all, a "loyal Bushie" hack, that likely won't change any time soon. The only other way Gonzales can lose his job is if Congress impeaches him, but the Democrats, showing no sign of gonads, aren't up for such a fight (much less impeaching Cheney or Bush.) They have threatened a resolution of no-confidence, believing that would shame him and Bush into his resignation. Apparently they haven't been paying attention the last six and a half years.

Perhaps the only good thing to come out of Gonzales' term as AG: the American public has been saved the prospect of Fredo as a Supreme Court justice. His name had been floated as a Bush nominee, and since he was viewed as a "moderate" Republican, he seemed like a candidate who could sail through confirmation without much Democratic opposition. Thanks to his miserable record as AG, a future Justice Gonzales plan seems doomed. Still, that Gonzales could be a leading candidate for a powerful lifetime appointment by the Bush Team shouldn't leave Americans feeling to confident about the future of justice in the USA.

In any case, we salute Aberto Gonzales as Beast of the Month. Congratulations, and keep up the great work, Al!!!

Sources:

Cohn, Marjorie. "The Quaint Mr. Gonzales." Truthout 13 November 2004 <http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/111304A.shtml>.

Collins, Michael. "Did Bush Commit Election Fraud?" Scoop 23 April 2007 <http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0704/S00350.htm>.

Crawford Greenburg, Jan and de Vogue, Ariane. "Gonzales Contradicts His Own Testimony." ABC News 16 April 2007 <http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=3046651&page=1>.

Egelko, Bob. "Gonzales Says the Constitution Doesn't Guarantee Habeas Corpus." San Francisco Chronicle 24 January 2007 <http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/01/24/MNGDONO11O1.DTL>.

Eggen,Dan and Goldstein, Amy. "Voter-Fraud Complaints by GOP Drove Dismissals." Washington Post 14 May 2007.

Eggen,Dan and Kane, Paul. "Karl Rove Knew About Firings, E-Mails Show." Washington Post 16 March 2007.

Isikoff, Michael. "Gonzales: Did He Help Bush Keep His DUI Quiet?" Newsweek 31 January 2005.

Kay, Joe. "Former Justice Department Official Describes Illegal Actions by Bush Administration in Defense of Domestic Spying." World Socialist Web Site 17 May 2007 <http://wsws.org/articles/2007/may2007/come-m17.shtml>.

Kay, Joe. "Former Justice Department Official's Testimony Raises Question: How Extensive Is Police State Spying in the US?" World Socialist Web Site 18 May 2007 <http://wsws.org/articles/2007/may2007/come-m18.shtml>.

Kellman, Laurie. "White House Pressed Ashcroft on Wiretaps." Associated Press 15 May 2007 <http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070515/ap_on_go_co/eavesdropping>.

"Married to the Mob, the Story of Alberto G." BuzzFlash 17 May 2007 <http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/editorials/135>.

Palast, Greg. "Fired Prosecuters: Rove's 'Obstruction of Justice?'" GregPalast.com 14 May 2007 <http://www.gregpalast.com/investigative-journalist-greg-palast-reports-on-the-firing-of-new-mexico-attorney-david-iglesias>.

Rich, Frank. "When Will Fredo Get Whacked?" New York Times 25 March 2007.

Scelfo, Julie. "Quite Unprecedented." Newsweek 15 March 2007 <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17627519/site/newsweek/page/0/>.

Justice official describes illegal actions by Bush

http://wsws.org/articles/2007/may2007/come-m17.shtml

World Socialist Web Site

Former Justice Department official describes illegal actions by Bush administration in defense of domestic spying
By Joe Kay
17 May 2007

In congressional testimony on Tuesday, a former top Justice Department official described how White House officials resorted to extraordinary actions to defend the administration’s illegal warrantless domestic wiretapping program. The testimony provides a portrait of an administration that operates outside of the law in the prosecution of a historically unprecedented attack on democratic rights.

Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey spoke before the Senate Judiciary Committee, answering questions from New York Democrat Charles Schumer. Comey gave details of a dispute between the White House and high-ranking officials in the Justice Department, including then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, over the National Security Agency (NSA) warrentless electronic surveillance operation initiated by executive order shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks. The dispute was first reported in the press in early 2006, but only in its broad outlines.

The wiretapping program involves spying on international phone calls and emails by people in the United States without the benefit of a court-issued warrant, in violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). It was so blatantly illegal that it provoked sharp opposition within the Justice Department, with Bush-appointee Ashcroft and Comey refusing to certify the program’s legality when it was up for reauthorization in 2004.

Comey was at the time (early March 2004) the acting attorney general, because Ashcroft was incapacitated following surgery for pancreatitis. Comey described how White House officials, angered by his refusal to certify the program’s legality, sought to pressure Ashcroft behind Comey’s back to give his approval. Those most directly involved were then-White House Counsel and current Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and then-White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, backed by Vice President Dick Cheney.

“I was concerned that this was an effort to do an end-run around the acting attorney general and to get a very sick man to approve something that the Department of Justice had already concluded—the department as a whole—it was unable to certify as to its legality,” Comey testified.

Comey did not give details on the nature of the Justice Department’s objections, nor what was eventually done to mollify its concerns. He refused even to explicitly confirm that he was speaking about the NSA program, citing its classified nature.

The dispute between the Justice Department and the White House emerged after a review by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel found that there was no legal foundation for the spying program.

In line with previous discussions with Ashcroft and the recommendations of the department, Comey refused to give his approval. The details of what happened next provide a picture of the type of methods employed by the White House, even against opponents within the administration itself.

Ashcroft’s wife, who had banned visitors to Ashcroft while he was recovering from surgery, called Ashcroft’s assistant on March 10, 2004 to inform him that she had received a call, and that Card and Gonzales would be visiting the disabled attorney general. Asked who made this call to Ashcroft’s wife, Comey testified, “I have some recollection that the call was from the president himself, but I don’t know that for sure. It came from the White House.”

Comey, informed by Ashcroft’s assistant of the pending visit, moved quickly to intervene. Jumping into his car, he “told my security detail that I needed to get to George Washington Hospital immediately. They turned on the emergency equipment and drove [with emergency lights flashing and siren blaring] very quickly to the hospital.” Arriving at the hospital he “literally ran up the stairs with my security detail.”

Comey was clearly concerned that Card and Gonzales would pressure a half-conscious Ashcroft to sign onto the spying program without fully realizing what he was doing. Comey, however, arrived at Ashcroft’s hospital bed first. “I immediately began speaking to him,” Comey testified, “trying to orient him as to time and place, and trying to see if he could focus on what was happening, and it wasn’t clear to me that he could. He seemed pretty bad off.”

Comey was so concerned that the White House officials would resort to thuggish behavior he called then-FBI Director Robert Mueller and had Mueller instruct the FBI agents present in Ashcroft’s room “not to allow me to be removed from the room under any circumstances.”

After a few minutes, Gonzales and Card arrived, and Gonzales began speaking with Ashcroft, asking him to reauthorize the program. Ashcroft refused, on the basis of the discussion with Comey and previous discussions in the Justice Department. According to Comey, “As he laid back down, he said, ‘But that doesn’t matter, because I’m not the attorney general. There is the attorney general,’ and he pointed to me ... The two men did not acknowledge me. They turned and walked from the room.”

Shortly after this interview, Card called Comey and demanded that he attend a meeting in the White House that evening. Again evidently convinced that the White House would resort to thuggish or underhanded methods, he insisted that he would not meet at the White House without a witness, choosing Theodore Olson, the solicitor general.

Unable to secure Comey’s support, the White House decided to go ahead with the program anyway. “The program was reauthorized without us and without a signature from the Department of Justice attesting as to its legality,” Comey said.

This is an extraordinary revelation. The Bush administration, in violation of the legal opinion of its own Justice Department—presumably responsible for upholding the law—went ahead with a program that involves unprecedented attacks on the democratic rights of the American people.

In response to this move, Comey says that he, Ashcroft and Mueller prepared to resign from the administration. This evidently prompted the White House to engage in some damage control to prevent an open rupture. Bush held a personal meeting with both Comey and Mueller, and some sort of arrangement was worked out to allow the spying program to continue, with the Justice Department officials giving their formal approval a few weeks later.

Comey would not give any details about what the nature of this agreement was, but it did not involve any fundamental changes to the program, which has continued to be used to spy on Americans without warrants. Indeed, the very existence of the program was not revealed until December of 2005.

This testimony speaks volumes about the modus operandi of the Bush administration. Comey was a top official in the administration. He was intimately familiar with the types of methods used by the White House, and his response in the dispute with Gonzales and Card was no doubt based on his prior experiences.

The Washington Post, in an editorial on Wednesday, spoke of a “lawlessness so shocking that it would have been unbelievable coming from a less reputable source.” This is indeed the basic character of the Bush administration—in its handling of domestic spying, the war in Iraq, and every other aspect of its policy.

The incident also underscores the illegality of the program itself. Ashcroft, one of the principal architects of the Patriot Act and similar legislation, is not known for his defense of democratic rights. That he, Mueller and Comey felt they had to oppose the White House is an indication of how unprecedented the new spying measures of the Bush administration were.

A year-and-a-half after the NSA spying program was first revealed to the public, its breadth and depth still remain unknown. What is clear, however, is that the Bush administration has begun compiling vast databases of phone calls, phone records, emails and other communications in violation of the FISA Act.

In 2006, a US Federal court ruled the NSA program unconstitutional and illegal, a decision that is currently under appeal. Meanwhile, the Bush administration is seeking Congressional approval for changes in the FISA Act that would expand government powers. The White House continues to insist, however, that whatever the law, the president has the constitutional authority as commander-in-chief to spy on the American people.

There are ample grounds for impeaching everyone involved in implementing these policies, including the president and vice president. Arlen Specter, the lone Republican senator to attend the hearing on Tuesday, noted that the story “has some characteristics of the Saturday Night Massacre.” He was referring to Nixon’s dismissal of the special prosecutor into the Watergate scandal Archibald Cox, and the subsequent resignations of the attorney general and the deputy attorney general.

The Saturday Night Massacre led eventually to the initiation of impeachment proceedings and the subsequent resignation of Nixon. In fact, the lawlessness of the Bush administration makes the actions of Nixon in Watergate look like petty theft.

In spite of this, very little has been made by the Democratic Party of the illegal spying program and the broader attacks on democratic rights, and there have been no serious calls for impeachment. On the contrary, Democratic congressional leaders such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have insisted repeatedly that there will be no move to impeach Bush, and this stance has been publicly defended by a number of so-called “anti-war” Democrats in Congress.

In fact, the Democrats do not have any principled disagreements with the Bush administration’s attack on the democratic rights of the American people.

It should be recalled that Senate Democrats helped give NSA chief Michael Hayden, who oversaw the illegal domestic spying program, a 78-15 confirmation vote to head the Central Intelligence Agency in May 2006, and they refused to filibuster Gonzales’ nomination to head the Justice Department in February 2005. Among those voting for Hayden was Charles Schumer.

Since they took control of Congress in January, the Democrats have said next to nothing about the NSA spying program and other unconstitutional domestic surveillance operations. Comey himself was called to testify in connection with the scandal surrounding the firing of US attorneys, not NSA warrantless wiretapping.