May 16 2007
Political Hack Smears Co-workers
Updated!
When the liberal media has to shore up the reputation of the political hacks in DC trying to pretend to be simple, innocent civil servant (trust me, in DC everyone is out for their personal agenda and fame) you KNOW the media’s propaganda dance for the Dems is on:
JAMES B. COMEY, the straight-as-an-arrow former No. 2 official at the Justice Department, yesterday offered the Senate Judiciary Committee an account of Bush administration lawlessness so shocking it would have been unbelievable coming from a less reputable source.
Actually, it is well known in town (Clarice will have all the dope out) that Comey is politically connected. And when something stretched like this, it is. The flip side of the WaPo observation is it is hard to believe someone like Comey would lower themselves to smearing others for personal gain. But DC is a notorious place where people battle ferociously for top positions and will do pretty much whatever it takes to cash in. So I seriously doubt the WaPo has discovered a rare diamond in the ruff. They are just propping up another Joe Wilson-class fibber.
Addendum: I guess it needs to be also noted that the PURPOSE of the visit to Ashcroft was the fear a terrorist attack may have been in the offing and there was a need for surveillance to protect America. It seems stating the obvious is now required for the BDS driven media who have become so consumed by their Bush hatred they have forgotten 9-11 even happened. Let alone there are people out there right now trying to exceed 9-11 in any manner they can concoct. So getting a surveillance warrant was a case of national security. I guess Comey forgot to mention that minor little detail. And it is clear Comey was a Gorelickite – one who was so afraid of what Americans might do with warrants he was willing to let terrorists free reign in our borders. Just as we did with 9-11. Reporters NEVER affirm the well known fact that many officials are on the record with statements that indicate NSA HAD leads on the 9-11 highjackers, but the old PROCESS (not law) required them to throw them out because one end of the intercept was in the US. Yes folks, we had the leads but the process Comey tried to salvage, and which led to 9-11 not being stopped, got in the way. That is the kind of man Comey is.
Addendum: Since RCP is now linking to this post as a right vs left (Firedoglake vs AJStrata) let me recap all my points on why the NSA program was NEVER illegal. I have a whole category of posts on the subject, but a sampling of one or two will suffice to show that reporting from the NY Times and Washington Post, covering public statements made by FISA Court Judges and government officials, make clear the NSA did nothing different or illegal. The main point is to go back to the NY Times initial story and note that the story was all wrong. It claimed the Bush administration bypassed the FIS Court, when in fact just the opposite was true. Prior to 9-11 (and based on Congressional Records from the Church Commission in the late 1970’s – at the time the FISA law was created) the NSA has always monitored our enemies’ communications. This should be of no surprise since that is their mission.
What was standard practice was to toss out all communications intercepted that had one end of the communication in the US. It was deemed a fail safe way to avoid the issue of using intel in law enforcement cases. This mindset solidified over the years as layers of policies (not laws) encoded this myopic practice. What this meant is we had surveillance of communications between the 9-11 highjackers and their masters overseas leading up to 9-11. These communications where never passed onto the FBI or local law enforcement.
The NY Times story was built around the resignation of a FISA Judge whose statement was the NSA leads “tainted” the FIS Court. Tainting is synonymous with ‘polluted’ which meant the NSA leads after 9-11 where actually going to the court – not bypassing it. There are numerous accounts of the FBI getting swamped with these new leads as Bush tore down the Gorelick wall which was the last incarnation of the blind mindset of ignoring potential terrorists here in country to save the messy details of court cases. Lawyers do love to minimize their headaches.
So what happened was post 9-11 was the NSA leads were now being passed to the FIS Court as the basis for probable cause in obtaining warrants. Until then it required FBI investigations to obtain independent evidence before warrants would be issued. The NSA leads were passed to the chief FIS Court judge for review into warrant applications. No other justices knew of this arrangement – which eventually leaked out and caused the one judge to resign and run to the media (with some Dem Congressional support).
The fact is the NSA was now following a process to vet leads, pass them to the FBI which could obtain temporary surveillance warrants so they could ascertain the threat level faster. This is clearly indicated in the final procedures adopted by the FIS Court which codified this new LEGAL process. Again, it is process issue – not a legal one. What the left cannot admit or face is the fact we need to act on intel to protect Americans. There were plenty of defenders of the old, suicidal process. Their lunatic theory was that protecting Americans took second priority to protecting laws. This is not the Constitutional mandate we have. Government is to protect the life, liberty and happiness of the people here, not some legal process. This is also evident by the FACT that the FIS Court first attempted to re-instate the Gorelick wall and even claimed this was their purpose in life in the one case which was appealed to the FIS Review Court (the court the resides over the FIS Court). The FIS Court lost and the NSA program proceeded. This was the only time in history the FIS Review Court was ever empanelled.
As I said I have nearly 200 posts on the subject and all my findings are traceable to the public record. I offer two (here and here) as just a sampling of what is out there if one looks. The NSA surveillance program corrected an idiotic policy that allowed 9-11 to happen. It is now corrected and virtually no warrants are being rejected. Also, the FIS Court has taken the lead in codifying the program. The NSA never changed one thing it did. All that happened is the leads it uncovered that led back to America or Americans (overseas) were now free to be passed to law enforcement, who investigate them and apply for FIS Court warrants for action. Those who claim otherwise are just ignorant of the facts surrounding this critical issue. And that includes all of the news media. H/T to RCP for the link!
Addendum: I have to respond to my great Ed Morrissey on this issue. While the DoJ report he references may have found some nits, the point is the program was solid and should NOT have been held up just because Comey did a CYA move. My guess (and Comey can confirm as well as the DoJ report) is the results of the analysis were minor adjustments and DID NOT affect on going investigations. With a 60 day turn around the policy adjustments called out in the review could have been done with the program continuing AND any specific cases effected suspended. The Feds are a slow moving group of people who have no desire to take responsibility. Thus Comey’s hesitation was all CYA (cover his butt). It is very clear Bush determined (a) none of the current cases were time critical and (b) the adjustments could be made in time to avoid risk. Comey can attest to these facts NOW. He will dodge these points. Trust me. He is a career CYA artist. There is nothing here and Comey was playing games. Any specific case affected by the DoJ review could have been suspended if necessary. A full up denial was not required. Any issues could have been handled by memos outlining new guidance for warrant applications. The bottom line was Comey did not need to put us all at risk at adjust to the minor fixes in the DoJ report. But he is a Gorelick puppet. He played games with OUR lives. If you want my guess he was one of the sources for the NY Times article which is why he is out there now making waves. This is all pure BS.
Addendum: For all those who keep throwing Comey’s titles out as if that bestows saintly qualities, in this town (DC) everyone has impressive titles. And way too many of them fall to the corruption of power and media attention. For those who need a reminder Comey is not US Representative (like Randy “Duke” Cunningham) so by the title measure he should be less saintly in his lowly position – by comparison. Heck, President is the top title in this country and we all know that doesn’t bestow purity. The titles may sound impressive – but they are all people with their fallacies. Comey is a hack because he ran to Congress and the media to ‘tell his story’ – yet no one else there has had that opportunity? Strange? Not in this town. DC is a brutal power game. The career inhabitants are the worst of the bunch at times. Anyone who pretends otherwise is seriously naive.
I have discovered that you can get through the threads a lot quicker if you just scroll past soothie’s paranoid ravings.
As far as Comey is concerned, John Hinderacker over at Power Line points out that there is nothing in this scenario that really changes anything. It just lets us know that there were efforts made by the administration to keep the program legal. After all, these are serious people, not Democrats.
I had gotten the impression from the left that Bush just ignored the law and the DoJ just ignored the law and they all did what they wanted to stop those nice terrorists from exercising their right to kill the rest of us. Here we find out the people within the administration were actually trying to stay within the law and that the President actually got involved and told the major players to do what they thought was right, and that includes Comey. He also made sure that the process was not interrupted by political infighting.
He did not shred the Constitution and while soothie and his ilk might drool all over themselves at the thought of impeachment, there is nothing in this testimony that would give a sane person any reason to believe an impeachable offence was committed. Note, I said sane person.
Sorry, nope, the NSA terrorist surveillance program is legal.
Soothie
Where are the news stories screaming about the crimes? Where is the outrage of the MSM?
We are waiting………………………………
Nope, Wolfowitz ain’t resigning. His lawyer denied that Wolfowitz had been working on the details allowing his way out. He said Wolfowitz preferred that the vote from the BOD determine his fate.
Soothsayer: Stop lying. And if I wanted Democrat propaganda, I could go straight to the DNC webpage.
SS:
Actually no I wasn’t pulling your leg, being able to bold and quote certain things helps to make a point instead of a generic paste. my email addy is my name I post under here at gmail. Thanks for your assistance.
test
test
okay Aitch; that worked; how do you get the Hyperlink or URL into a single word?
Thanks..
Dale
Here is how to do it:
About AJ
Step one
Step 4 You can add the title of the post you are linking too or
what ever you want.
Step 5 End the string with this
Good Luck!
This is a test.
This is a test.
Quoth DubiousD:
Seems to work.
Scaulen says
But thanks for the help.
Congratulations, AJStrata!
To add a hyperlink, here is how to do it (after removing imbedded blanks)
add your title
Note: there should be a blank between a and href.
Hi, I went to RCP but don’t find any articles that referred to Firedoglake v. AJStrata.
Back on topic:
Must read thread over at Just One Minute regarding the Comey testimony. First Tom points out this story is actually over a year old; the NYT covered this story back in January 2006. Only the MSM is acting like they found about the bedridden Ashcroft visit just now.
The comments are also a must read, particularly anduril’s and some gal named Clarice.
http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2007/05/comey_and_the_n.html
Powerline had a good synopsis yesterday. Basically, the AG was re-authorizing the program for 45-day intervals, over & over & over. At some point, DoJ began conducting an in-depth review, but while that was going on Ashcroft continued to reauthorize. At last the report was finished, and DoJ had an issue with current procedures being used, and at same time Ashcroft becomes very ill. WH goes to hospital to have Ascroft reauthorize again, as he’s done all along, but now Ashcroft concurs with the DoJ report and refuses to sign without a change being made. Hence the meeting a couple days later, a change is made (classified), and the program continues on. Nothing unusal, certainly not a scandal.
Also, SS (& the media) does not understand what NSA does — they do not “wiretap” domestically.
Here’s all I did on this today (most of it is Al Johnson’s) From American Thinker
May 16, 2007
Comey’s testimony yesterday (updated)
Al Johnson
On the face of it, there was little of interest in former Deputy Attorney General Comey’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday. No wrongdoing was alleged against AG Gonzalez or any Administration official, and the matters discussed occurred well before Gonzalez was even nominated for the AG post. However, there is an aspect that deserves to be emphasized–or, rather, there is more to the context than appears in the testimony.
Comey came on board as DAG at the beginning of December, 2003, and he had some unusual support for a Republican appointee–Senator Chuck Schumer was very much in his corner. So it was that Comey was pretty much brand new on the job at the time he decided to reverse what appeared to the Administration as settled policy on the NSA eavesdropping program–certainly a shocking and radical development in any Administration. But Comey had already taken actions that boded ill for the White House, and especially for the Office of the Vice President (OVP), with whom the transcript shows he was in serious, and probably personal, conflict.
Comey, when asked for names of his adversaries in the OVP, mentioned his disagreements with VP Dick Cheney and Cheney’s Legal Counsel, David Addington. Curiously, Comey failed to mention Scooter Libby–Cheney’s Chief of Staff, a prominent attorney in his own right, and a leading architect of policy at the OVP–even though it is known that Libby was also involved in these matters. It is scarcely credible to suppose that Comey had no dealings with Libby, nor that they were in disagreement over the NSA program. Perhaps Comey avoided mention of Libby because he wished to avoid the appearance of personal animus. After all, it is well known that Libby had beaten Comey in a contentious case in the Southern District of New York a few years earlier, and one of Comey’s first acts as DAG–before the NSA program came up for recertification–was to talk Ashcroft into recusing himself from the Plame affair. Comey then proceeded to appoint his former SDNY pal Patrick Fitzgerald to go after Libby, even expanding Fitzgerald’s purview to “process violations,” even though Comey knew that Armitage was the “leaker” and that the supposed “leak” violated no known law.
The upshot was that Comey and his supporters–I’m guessing career lawyers at DoJ with past connections to Schumer and other Democrats–may well have already been targeting the OVP through Fitzgerald when they next precipitated a crisis by refusing to recertify the NSA program. I doubt that it was any coincidence that Fitzgerald dragged Cheney and Addington into the Plamegate charade. Remember, too, that both Comey and Fitzgerald had close connections with Schumer from their days in the SDNY. Seen in the total context, Comey throwing bouquets Ashcroft’s way during his testimony was a subterfuge, a way of saying: look, even the arch-conservative Ashcroft was morally outraged at the evil Administration. Certainly Comey tacked back and forth, admitting that nothing illegal was done and so forth, but the PR damage was done–as intended. I suspect that the arrival of Comey at the feckless Ashcroft’s DoJ signalled the beginning of a coup attempt that would use DoJ to try to topple, or seriously cripple, the Administration through action on several fronts: prominently Plamegate and legal aspects of the GWOT. To suppose that all this was coincidence is to elevate coincidence to the level of an analytical principle in the study of politics–something no person with any knowledge of the ways in which bureaucracies work can accept.
Al Johnson is a retired attorney.
Update: Clarice Feldman writes,
When asked yesterday who he had discussed the Administration’s disagreement with the Department of Justice about, Comey seems to have had a memory lapse of his own.
Scooter Libby was the point man on this issue. From Opinionjournal.com:
But Mr. Libby and Mr. Comey tangled more recently as well. In 2004, as Mr. Fitzgerald was gearing up his investigation, Mr. Libby was the Administration’s point man in trying to get Justice to sign off on the NSA wiretapping program. In early 2004, Mr. Comey was acting Attorney General while John Ashcroft recovered from gall bladder surgery, and Mr. Comey reportedly refused to give the NSA program the greenlight, prompting the White House to seek out Mr. Ashcroft in the hospital in a bid to circumvent Mr. Comey.[/quote]
Yet here is his exchange on the point with Senator Specter:
SPECTER: Well, Mr. Comey, did you have discussions with anybody else in the administration who disagreed with your conclusions?
COMEY: Yes, sir.
SPECTER: Who else?
COMEY: Vice president.
SPECTER: Anybody else?
COMEY: Members of his staff.
SPECTER: Who on his staff?
COMEY: Mr. Addington disagreed with the conclusion. And I’m sure there were others who disagreed, but…
SPECTER: Well, I don’t want to know who disagreed. I want to know who told you they disagreed.
COMEY: OK.
SPECTER: Addington?
COMEY: Mr. Addington. The vice president told me that he disagreed. I don’t remember any other White House officials telling me they disagreed.
SPECTER: OK. So you’ve got Card, Gonzales, Vice President Cheney and Addington who told you they disagreed with you.
COMEY: Yes, sir.
Hat tip: anduril and h & r
Posted at 01:25 PM | Email | Permalink
Dale
Here is a web page you teach how to do links.
Link Tutorial
http://www.echoecho.com/htmllinks01.htm
To do a hyperlink:
Type: Strata
Result: Strata
We now return you to our regularly scheduled thread already in progress. 🙂