The Senate has apparently reached a deal that threatens any attempt to uncover the details of the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping of American citizens and whether those actions violated the law.
This is a sad and embarrassing trial and the Senate Intelligence Committee, led by chairman Sen. Jay Rockefeller, is essentially throwing the rule of law and the rigorous pursuit of justice under the bus--and it's not clear what is gained by doing so. It's very clear what is lost.
When the Bush administration's intelligence agencies began domestic spying operations, the major telecom companies had to comply to make it work. The White House, on the one hand, insists that it was legal; on the other hand, at the very same time, wants the telecom companies to receive retroactive immunity from any civil litigation--for allowing their customers' privacy to be violated by the federal government.
To recap, the White House is pushing two circles of logic here, and both are dangerous. One is that the White House says that its wiretapping program was legal, but still wants telecoms to be granted immunity. The other, which I covered earlier, is that the White House wants Congress to grant the telecoms immunity, but is preventing the telecoms from going before Congress to divulge what they did and what they'd deserve immunity from.
If we want a chance at justice with regard to the wiretapping program, letting the telecom companies retroactively off the hook may make that impossible, because then they'll never have to comply with any investigations.
It is unclear why the Senate would grant immunity to the telecoms while being kept in the dark about their activities in allowing domestic spying on American citizens.
Update:
At least three of the top-10 contributors to Rockefeller are telecom industry giants. Sadly but not surprisingly, "American citizens who were unlawfully spied on" do not have a well-funded PAC, or maybe this would have turned out differently.
This is getting a bit scary. According to an AP story today, the White House is blocking telecom companies from cooperating with Congress to determine whether they permitted unlawful spying on American citizens by the intelligence agencies of the U.S. government.
Three telecommunications companies have declined to tell Congress whether they gave U.S. intelligence agencies access to Americans' phone and computer records without court orders, citing White House objections and national security.
Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell "formally invoked the state secrets privilege to prevent AT&T from either confirming or denying" any details about intelligence programs, AT&T general counsel Wayne Watts wrote in a letter to the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
Qwest and Verizon also declined to answer, saying the federal government has prohibited them from providing information, discussing or referring to any classified intelligence activities.
Simultaneously, the Bush administration pushes Congress to grant telecom companies
retroactive immunity from legal action for complying with the spying requests.
The Bush administration, urged by the telecommunication industry, is pushing hard for Congress to include immunity for past actions in any package to protect them from a series of civil suits.
Without the records, "to give immunity at this point in time would be a blind immunity," the House majority leader, Steny D. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland, told reporters.
Essentially the White House insists that Congress give telecom companies retroactive immunity but is preventing Congress from finding out what those companies did, i.e. why they need to be immune. If this seems circular and dangerous to you, you're right on target.
They're invoking the "state secrets" privilege to attempt this circuitous avoidance of any oversight by Congress and any possibility of accountability. This is not how an executive branch is meant to act in a system of checks and balances in a country governed by law and justice.
The FISA/wiretapping bill that is coming up for debate may include retroactive immunity for the telecom companies, at least in the Senate version, according to the AP story. As Hoyer said above, it's clear that it should not.
The Office of the Special Council (OSC) has drafted a report concluding that Lurita Doan, the head of the General Services Administration (GSA), the government agency responsible for service, supply and real estate contracts, violated the Hatch Act, which prohibits certain government officials from entering into partisan political activity.
In other words, she broke the law.
OSC confirmed Doan asked other GSA employees to think how their agency could help "our candidates," following a 2006 PowerPoint presentation by the White House political office on Republicans in tight congressional races, sources told ABC News.
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