NSA Wiretap Program ruled Unconstitutional

[LuvDuke]

You mean that game that the Democrats in Congress love to play?

They've gotten so good at it that they were able to justify overwhelming bipartisan support for confirming General Hayden's nomination as CIA director. This in spite of the fact that he was in charge of that NSA wiretap program, the one they all proclaim is illegal (but don't actually say we should stop utilizing it). And they were able to do it, and still give cover to those Democrats who have national aspirations in 2008 and need to appease the Far Left wing that's taking over their party.

Yep, they all look like pretzels these days.

Brings to mind a quote:

"Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people."

(Robert Benchley)

 

[JPN4265]

Just get the damn warranty and keep tapping the phone lines. What's the problem?

 

[sodaseller]

So why didn't those that were briefed speak out long long ago? Surely they must have known the briefings were illegal. Or were they just incompetent?

This is a talking point that is just so untrue. The common GOP talking point put out is that Dem Congressional leaders were briefed on the program and did not object; hence, it was not truly problematic, and their current protests are political, not substantive.

That arguments is so dishonest on so many levels. The objectionable aspects of the program are its breadth and the fact that there is no independent review,. Neither of those facets were fully briefed. Just look at Sen. Rockefeller's letter that he sent to his own safe memorializing that Cheney refused to give them the details needed, either directly or through any other channel, such that Rockefeller could not evaluate the program. Cheney also refused to let any details be reviewed for Congressional leaders on the program's legality or its technical function. Congressional leaders still don't know those details. And those details are the key to whether the program is legal or illegal.

Congressional leaders still don't know how communications are scanned for potential intercept, what criteria are used (how do the individuals administering the program define "reasonable suspicion", a term without a fixed legal meaning, unlike "probable cause", the 4th Amendment standard), who decides what merits further direct interception, and who else has to sign off on it before it's finally intercepted, how long calls are monitored, what, if any, minimization techniques are used to avoid communications of persons covered by FISA, and how long either the raw data or the specific intercepts are stored.

None of these facts are known by Congressional leaders (who have full clearances) or anyone else, including FISA judges (who also have full clearance). It isn't a matter of 72 hours or 72 days. No one outside a small group of executive branch officials have any review capability or knowledge of these very significant details. Everything suggest that Administration is retaining large reams of otherwise personal data with know link to reasonable suspicion of anyone involved in terrorist activity.

To not be troubled by that, it really requires one to believe that Cheney and crew, unique among humans in history, are incorruptible and could never misuse such information. But we've already seen examples to the contrary - John Bolton using intercepts for political turf battles. And don't forget groupthink. It was just such incestuous closed practices that led to some of the obvious lies propagated before the war. Cheney and crew convinced themselves that the Niger documents were not forged, that the tubes were centrifuges, that Curveball was credible, etc. They have demonstrated loathsome judgment in the past, but are the only individuals that know how this program operates and control the feeding on intel gained into the system. That's scary, because even if they resist corruption, they're demonstrably incompetent.

If FISA is too unwieldy, relax the timeframes and some standards. If we need to datamine, set up some walls and standards on how that's used, and share those and the results with other officials with clearance.

But members of Congress were not briefed other than in the most general way. They learned some of the details the same way we did - reading the paper, after NSA figures leaked because they were troubled. It's simply false to make that argument.

And let's not forget Bob Graham's experience. Before the Iraq War, he asked for an NIE from the CIA assessing all the claims the Admin was making publicly. He got one, and it showed how weak the case was. Actually, it was galling and telling that no NIE had yet been prepared, as Eli Lake has noted - Cheney and crew were controlling the intel flow and we were making (had made) the decision to go to war without asking the intel community for their assessment of the very claims that were being used to justify war. In any event, other members of Congress then asked for a regular NIE to Congress and one was produced, though not the same one that Graham saw. All the data that pointed to the fact that the claims were suspect was edited out. Graham was furious and protested in real time, but Cheney and crew made sure to use the clearance laws for political purposes, ensuring the Members of Congress without Graham's highest clearance (which few have) did not see an accurate picture of the intel community's assessment of the claims that were being made to justify war.

 

[TheDoctor]

This is a talking point that is just so untrue. The common GOP talking point put out is that Dem Congressional leaders were briefed on the program and did not object; hence, it was not truly problematic, and their current protests are political, not substantive.

That arguments is so dishonest on so many levels. The objectionable aspects of the program are its breadth and the fact that there is no independent review,. Neither of those facets were fully briefed. Just look at Sen. Rockefeller's letter that he sent to his own safe memorializing that Cheney refused to give them the details needed, either directly or through any other channel, such that Rockefeller could not evaluate the program. Cheney also refused to let any details be reviewed for Congressional leaders on the program's legality or its technical function. Congressional leaders still don't know those details. And those details are the key to whether the program is legal or illegal.

Congressional leaders still don't know how communications are scanned for potential intercept, what criteria are used (how do the individuals administering the program define "reasonable suspicion", a term without a fixed legal meaning, unlike "probable cause", the 4th Amendment standard), who decides what merits further direct interception, and who else has to sign off on it before it's finally intercepted, how long calls are monitored, what, if any, minimization techniques are used to avoid communications of persons covered by FISA, and how long either the raw data or the specific intercepts are stored.

None of these facts are known by Congressional leaders (who have full clearances) or anyone else, including FISA judges (who also have full clearance). It isn't a matter of 72 hours or 72 days. No one outside a small group of executive branch officials have any review capability or knowledge of these very significant details. Everything suggest that Administration is retaining large reams of otherwise personal data with know link to reasonable suspicion of anyone involved in terrorist activity.

To not be troubled by that, it really requires one to believe that Cheney and crew, unique among humans in history, are incorruptible and could never misuse such information. But we've already seen examples to the contrary - John Bolton using intercepts for political turf battles. And don't forget groupthink. It was just such incestuous closed practices that led to some of the obvious lies propagated before the war. Cheney and crew convinced themselves that the Niger documents were not forged, that the tubes were centrifuges, that Curveball was credible, etc. They have demonstrated loathsome judgment in the past, but are the only individuals that know how this program operates and control the feeding on intel gained into the system. That's scary, because even if they resist corruption, they're demonstrably incompetent.

If FISA is too unwieldy, relax the timeframes and some standards. If we need to datamine, set up some walls and standards on how that's used, and share those and the results with other officials with clearance.

But members of Congress were not briefed other than in the most general way. They learned some of the details the same way we did - reading the paper, after NSA figures leaked because they were troubled. It's simply false to make that argument.

And let's not forget Bob Graham's experience. Before the Iraq War, he asked for an NIE from the CIA assessing all the claims the Admin was making publicly. He got one, and it showed how weak the case was. Actually, it was galling and telling that no NIE had yet been prepared, as Eli Lake has noted - Cheney and crew were controlling the intel flow and we were making (had made) the decision to go to war without asking the intel community for their assessment of the very claims that were being used to justify war. In any event, other members of Congress then asked for a regular NIE to Congress and one was produced, though not the same one that Graham saw. All the data that pointed to the fact that the claims were suspect was edited out. Graham was furious and protested in real time, but Cheney and crew made sure to use the clearance laws for political purposes, ensuring the Members of Congress without Graham's highest clearance (which few have) did not see an accurate picture of the intel community's assessment of the claims that were being made to justify war.

Good post. The issue on whether Congressional Democrats were briefed is a red herring and has no bearing on the issue on whether the NSA wiretap program is illegal. The claim that the Congressional Democrats were adequatedly briefed on the program is just plain wrong and silly.

 

[TheDoctor]

Please note that one other judge has rejected the state secrets defense with regard to a lawsuit pending against AT&T with respect to the NSA wiretap program. http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1153472733978

U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker swept aside federal government claims that a National Security Agency wiretapping program amounts to one big state secret and is not subject to a judicial challenge.

One big reason, Walker wrote: It's not much of a secret at all.

"The government has disclosed the general contours of the 'terrorist surveillance program,'" Walker wrote in a 72-page ruling issued Wednesday.

Walker's ruling in Hepting v. AT&T, 06-672, opens the door to a huge class action on behalf of millions of telecommunications customers nationwide. ....

Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, said Walker's ruling "seemed to carefully balance civil liberties and national security [and] thoroughly dealt with all the relevant precedent."

But Tobias said other judges, including those facing similar claims in other jurisdictions, might not be as flexible in applying case law on the state secrets privilege.

"When the government has claimed [the state secrets privilege], it's been almost automatic for some judges," he said.

Given the government's public acknowledgements of wiretapping -- including President Bush's admission last December that he authorized the program -- plaintiffs lawyer Robert Fram said he wasn't surprised by Walker's ruling. The fact that several major telecommunications providers, but not AT&T, denied participation in the wiretapping proved significant as well.

"I think Judge Walker paid careful attention to the public discussion of the issue," said Fram, a Heller Ehrman partner representing the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "The denials by some of the telecom companies provide stark contrast to [AT&T's statements]."

Walker, who's noted for ruling with a libertarian viewpoint, capped his decision with a bit of skepticism about the terrorist surveillance program.

"It seems odd," he wrote, "that a terrorist would continue using AT&T given that BellSouth, Verizon and Qwest have publicly denied participating in the alleged communication records program and would appear to be safer choices."

Again, the state secret doctrine has been rejected in a very similar case. As noted earlier, in the current case, the DOJ only really made two arguements-standing and state secrets. The state secret doctrine has been a winner for the bushies in the past but they may have overused this defense.

 

[TheDoctor]

Okay, I get it. In your view, the standing doctrine and state secrets privilege have no validity in our judicial system other than as a procedural "trick".

Wrong. The bushies have used the state secrets doctrine more times than the doctrine has been invoked prior to the prior history of the doctrine. In this case the doctrine has been found not to apply which consistent with another ruling.

As to standing, it is a valid issue in some contexts. Here the claim of standing is being used as shield to keep the court from reviewing the merits of a case. The courts frown on this and for example have carved exceptions to the standing requirement in abortion cases (capable of repetition but evading review) because the normal pregnacy is over before a case can get through the court system. Here the standing issue is bogus. The GOP have tried the standing trick a couple of times and it is not working as evidence by the Delay case.

 

[LuvDuke]

Just get the damn warranty and keep tapping the phone lines. What's the problem?

If you meant "warrant", ITA. What the hell is the problem with following the law?

If you meant "warranty", from your mouth to God's ears. I wish Bush did come with a warranty as maybe we could get a replacement for this broken presidency.

 

[bsnyder]

This is a talking point that is just so untrue. The common GOP talking point put out is that Dem Congressional leaders were briefed on the program and did not object; hence, it was not truly problematic, and their current protests are political, not substantive.

That arguments is so dishonest on so many levels. The objectionable aspects of the program are its breadth and the fact that there is no independent review,. Neither of those facets were fully briefed. Just look at Sen. Rockefeller's letter that he sent to his own safe memorializing that Cheney refused to give them the details needed, either directly or through any other channel, such that Rockefeller could not evaluate the program. Cheney also refused to let any details be reviewed for Congressional leaders on the program's legality or its technical function. Congressional leaders still don't know those details. And those details are the key to whether the program is legal or illegal.

Congressional leaders still don't know how communications are scanned for potential intercept, what criteria are used (how do the individuals administering the program define "reasonable suspicion", a term without a fixed legal meaning, unlike "probable cause", the 4th Amendment standard), who decides what merits further direct interception, and who else has to sign off on it before it's finally intercepted, how long calls are monitored, what, if any, minimization techniques are used to avoid communications of persons covered by FISA, and how long either the raw data or the specific intercepts are stored.

None of these facts are known by Congressional leaders (who have full clearances) or anyone else, including FISA judges (who also have full clearance). It isn't a matter of 72 hours or 72 days. No one outside a small group of executive branch officials have any review capability or knowledge of these very significant details. Everything suggest that Administration is retaining large reams of otherwise personal data with know link to reasonable suspicion of anyone involved in terrorist activity.

To not be troubled by that, it really requires one to believe that Cheney and crew, unique among humans in history, are incorruptible and could never misuse such information. But we've already seen examples to the contrary - John Bolton using intercepts for political turf battles. And don't forget groupthink. It was just such incestuous closed practices that led to some of the obvious lies propagated before the war. Cheney and crew convinced themselves that the Niger documents were not forged, that the tubes were centrifuges, that Curveball was credible, etc. They have demonstrated loathsome judgment in the past, but are the only individuals that know how this program operates and control the feeding on intel gained into the system. That's scary, because even if they resist corruption, they're demonstrably incompetent.

If FISA is too unwieldy, relax the timeframes and some standards. If we need to datamine, set up some walls and standards on how that's used, and share those and the results with other officials with clearance.

But members of Congress were not briefed other than in the most general way. They learned some of the details the same way we did - reading the paper, after NSA figures leaked because they were troubled. It's simply false to make that argument.

And let's not forget Bob Graham's experience. Before the Iraq War, he asked for an NIE from the CIA assessing all the claims the Admin was making publicly. He got one, and it showed how weak the case was. Actually, it was galling and telling that no NIE had yet been prepared, as Eli Lake has noted - Cheney and crew were controlling the intel flow and we were making (had made) the decision to go to war without asking the intel community for their assessment of the very claims that were being used to justify war. In any event, other members of Congress then asked for a regular NIE to Congress and one was produced, though not the same one that Graham saw. All the data that pointed to the fact that the claims were suspect was edited out. Graham was furious and protested in real time, but Cheney and crew made sure to use the clearance laws for political purposes, ensuring the Members of Congress without Graham's highest clearance (which few have) did not see an accurate picture of the intel community's assessment of the claims that were being made to justify war.

If this is truly what you believe, then the Democrats in Congress are complete cowards. Particularly Senator Graham. If he believed the Administration was lying about their justification for war, and manipulating the intelligence, he had a duty to speak out, prior to the war, just like the whistleblowers did after the fact. Why didn't he?

And your opinion here doesn't comport with all the facts we see before us. Why would any Democrat vote to confirm General Hayden's nomination? And why are they not calling for the program to be shut down?

 

[sodaseller]

If this is truly what you believe, then the Democrats in Congress are complete cowards. Particularly Senator Graham. If he believed the Administration was lying about their justification for war, and manipulating the intelligence, he had a duty to speak out, prior to the war, just like the whistleblowers did after the fact. Why didn't he?

And your opinion here doesn't comport with all the facts we see before us. Why would any Democrat vote to confirm General Hayden's nomination? And why are they not calling for the program to be shut down?

You really have no idea what you are talking about, as on every thread. Graham did protest, and even voted against the authorization of force. He did everything he could legally to show the deceit occurring

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/justify/2004/0712distorteddata.htm

Then-CIA Director George J. Tenet resisted producing the NIE for Congress. Had the classified version not been produced, it would have been much more difficult to detect the distortions between what the intelligence community believed in private, and what it gave to the public.

When the public White Paper version was released in October, it sparked strong protests from Democrats on the Senate intelligence panel who had the classified version. They believed the public document slanted the case toward the administration's view of the Iraqi threat. In particular, Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), the panel's chairman at the time, pushed the CIA to declassify more information.

And again something that is apparently beyond your ability to understand is that Graham was one of handful of MCs with access to the classified NIE, which had been classified at a higher level than usual, which was itself an example of deceit, as NIEs are supposed to be avaialble to all MCs. The one that was made available to all MCs was the cooked one. You still cannot even understand that basic point.

The only thing cowardly is your ignorant smearing of honorable individuals, seeking to drag them down to the level of the small men you defend.

There are no facts before you, and the last thing you care about is facts in reaching any conclusion. Don't frame your response as if it comes from an informed viewpoint. As for why Hayden was confirmed, likely to try to salvage what was left of the intel community after Porter Goss had conducted his purge to further advance the cause of deceit. You really have no idea what you are talking about

 

[bsnyder]

You really have no idea what you are talking about, as on every thread. Graham did protest, and even voted against the authorization of force. He did everything he could legally to show the deceit occurring

Legally? What about morally? You're saying he knew before the war, that it was all lies and manipulation. He could have stepped up to the plate. He could have alerted the NY Times. He didn't.

The only facts you provide are those that you cherry-pick and distort to make your case. Ironic, since that's what you accuse the Administration of doing.

The political aspects involved in the pre-war and post-war intelligence wars are as plain as day. Only an idiot would refuse to admit them.

 

[TheDoctor]

This is amusing. http://volokh.com/posts/1156190208.shtml#134994

It appears that the Department of Justice elected not to brief the merits of the Plaintiffs' claims, notwithstanding the District Court's twice denying the government's motions to continue the Plaintiffs' summary judgment motion. If discovery was needed in order to respond to the summary judgment motion, the DOJ could have apprized the court of that need for discovery under Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(f), which it apparently did not do.

Any civil litigator knows that, where a summary judgment motion is made and properly supported, responsibility for showing a material, factual dispute sufficient to preclude summary judgment shifts to the non-moving party, and the non-movant ignores this at his peril. See, e.g., Celotex Corp. v. Catrett, 477 U.S. 317, 106 S.Ct. 2548, 91 L.Ed.2d 265 (1986). Indeed, a district court has the power to enter summary judgments sua sponte, so long as the losing party was on notice that it had to come forward with all of its evidence. Id., at 326.

For example, if the DOJ for tactical reasons declined to adress the merits of the Plaintiffs' Fourth Amendment claims, then summary judgment would be appropriate on such claims, in light of the well-established presumption that a warrantless search or seizure is constitutionally unreasonable. It is elementary that the burden of justifying a warrantless search rests upon those who would proceed without a warrant. If the presumption of unreasonableness is not rebutted, then summary judgment in favor of the party aggrieved by the warrantless search is quite appropriate. (Whether these Plaintiffs have established that they are aggrieved persons will of course be subject to de novo review on appeal.)

While the portion of Judge Taylor's opinion addressing the merits is not artfully crafted, the government has its own gamesmanship to blame. To the extent that Judge Taylor's order advances further judicial review of a program as to which the administration has assiduously avoided any form of judicial review or accountability is a good thing. This order serves the purpose of the proverbial two by four used to get the old mule's attention.

Appellate review of an order granting summary judgment is de novo on the record developed before the trial court, with no presumption of correctness. In this case it will be quite interesting to see whether the DOJ abandons its "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" posture.

The attacks on the rulings of Justice Taylor are being shown to be unwarranted. The DOJ could not defend the merits of the warrantless wiretap policy and tried a procedural trick that did not work. Remember one other judge has also rejected the State Secret defense with regard to the warrantless wiretap program. It is silly for people to complain about parts of the opinion that are due to the DOJ's own trial tactics.

 

[TheDoctor]

The only facts you provide are those that you cherry-pick and distort to make your case. Ironic, since that's what you accuse the Administration of doing.

The political aspects involved in the pre-war and post-war intelligence wars are as plain as day. Only an idiot would refuse to admit them.

You are wrong as is usual. It has been well established now that Bush fixed the facts and the intelligence to justify the war. Lets look at one simple example. A key element of the case for war against Iraq was the mobile weapon labs. Well it turns out that the sole source of intelligence about these labs was reports from German intelligence officers who were debriefing an Iraqi defector named Curveball. Guess what? The Germans also told us that Curveball was a liar and could not be trusted. The bushies ignored these warnings and ran with the mobile weapon lab story (including having Sec. Powell rely on this story in his presentation to the UN). BTW, can you point to one thing that Sec. Powell used at the UN that has proven correct?

Your claim of cherry picking is so silly that it is funny. Thank you for the laugh (I really needed it today).

The only sad thing is that many bushies are unable to see the truth that bush lied about the war in Iraq. There is a reason why 54% of the American poll think that bush is a liar according to one poll.

 

[JPN4265]

If you meant "warrant", ITA. What the hell is the problem with following the law?

If you meant "warranty", from your mouth to God's ears. I wish Bush did come with a warranty as maybe we could get a replacement for this broken presidency.

I did mean warrant. But even though I don't agree with you, I got a good laugh out of your meaning of warranty.

 

[bsnyder]

You are wrong as is usual. It has been well established now that Bush fixed the facts and the intelligence to justify the war. Lets look at one simple example. A key element of the case for war against Iraq was the mobile weapon labs. Well it turns out that the sole source of intelligence about these labs was reports from German intelligence officers who were debriefing an Iraqi defector named Curveball. Guess what? The Germans also told us that Curveball was a liar and could not be trusted. The bushies ignored these warnings and ran with the mobile weapon lab story (including having Sec. Powell rely on this story in his presentation to the UN). BTW, can you point to one thing that Sec. Powell used at the UN that has proven correct?

Your claim of cherry picking is so silly that it is funny. Thank you for the laugh (I really needed it today).

The only sad thing is that many bushies are unable to see the truth that bush lied about the war in Iraq. There is a reason why 54% of the American poll think that bush is a liar according to one poll.

Could you please point me to the "well established" proof that the information about Curveball ever made it beyond the CIA?

 

[TheDoctor]

Could you please point me to the "well established" proof that the information about Curveball ever made it beyond the CIA?

Here are some articles for you to consider. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/24/AR2006062401081.html

In late January 2003, as Secretary of State Colin Powell prepared to argue the Bush administration's case against Iraq at the United Nations, veteran CIA officer Tyler Drumheller sat down with a classified draft of Powell's speech to look for errors. He found a whopper: a claim about mobile biological labs built by Iraq for germ warfare.

Drumheller instantly recognized the source, an Iraqi defector suspected of being mentally unstable and a liar. The CIA officer took his pen, he recounted in an interview, and crossed out the whole paragraph.

few days later, the lines were back in the speech. Powell stood before the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5 and said: "We have first-hand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails."

The sentence took Drumheller completely by surprise.

"We thought we had taken care of the problem," said the man who was the CIA's European operations chief before retiring last year, "but I turn on the television and there it was, again."

While the administration has repeatedly acknowledged intelligence failures over Iraqi weapons claims that led to war, new accounts by former insiders such as Drumheller shed light on one of the most spectacular failures of all: How U.S. intelligence agencies were eagerly drawn in by reports about a troubled defector's claims of secret germ factories in the Iraqi desert. The mobile labs were never found.

This is a good timeline of all of the curveball silliness. http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/...omplete_timeline_of_the_2003_invasion_of_iraq

November 1999
Curveball, an Iraqi engineer in his late 20s, travels to Germany on a tourist visa and applies for political asylum telling German immigration officials that he embezzled money from the Iraqi government and fears prison or worse if he returns home. The Germans send him to Zirndorf, a refugee center near Nuremberg, where other Iraqi exiles seeking German visas are being held. There, he changes his story, telling German intelligence (BND) officers that in Iraq he designed laboratory equipment to convert trucks into biological weapons laboratories....

January 2000 - September 2001
But Curveball never says that he actually produced biological weapons or witnessed anyone else doing so and the BND is unable to verify his claims. Curveball’s statements are recorded in German, shared with a local Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) team, and sent to the US, where they are translated into English for analysis at the DIA’s directorate for human intelligence in Clarendon, Va. “This was not substantial evidence,” one senior German intelligence official later recalls in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “We made clear we could not verify the things he said.”

(January 2000-2003)
Iraqi informants cited in internal US intelligence reports dispute Curveball’s claims (see January 2000 - September 2001) that Iraq has mobile biological weapons factories. Some of the informants suggest that Curveball is actually referring to trailers designed to produce hydrogen for artillery weather balloons. [Washington Post, 4/12/2006]

(Early 2001)
MI6, Britain’s secret intelligence service, cables the CIA informing the agency that it “is not convinced that Curveball is a wholly reliable source” and that “elements of [his] behavior strike us as typical of ... fabricators,” according to a later investigation by the US Senate. The British also note that satellite images taken in 1997 when Curveball was presumably working at Djerf al Nadaf contradict his descriptions of the facility. [Los Angeles Times, 11/20/2005]

September 2002
Tyler Drumheller, the head of CIA spying in Europe, calls the German Intelligence (BND) station chief at the German embassy in Washington hoping to obtain permission to interview Curveball. Over lunch at a restaurant in Georgetown, the two discuss the case and the German officer tells Drumheller that Curveball is “crazy” [Los Angeles Times, 11/20/2005] and that the BND questions “whether Curveball [is] actually telling the truth.” [Washington Post, 5/21/2005] They think “he’s probably a fabricator,” the German says. Drumheller is also told that the BND will not give in to CIA requests to gain access to him. After the meeting, Drumheller and several aides get into bitter arguments with CIA analysts working on the Curveball case. “The fact is, there was a lot of yelling and screaming about this guy,” James Pavitt, chief of clandestine services, will later tell the Los Angeles Times. “My people were saying, ‘We think he’s a stinker.’” But CIA analysts remain supportive of Curveball’s account. In one meeting, the chief CIA analyst argues that material she found on the Internet corroborates Curveball’s account, to which the operations group chief for Germany retorts, “That’s where he got it too.” [Los Angeles Times, 11/20/2005]

January 27, 2003
The CIA’s Berlin station chief warns CIA headquarters that information on the alleged mobile biological units supplied by Iraqi defector “Curveball” should not be used in Bush’s state of the union speech. The station chief explains that the German intelligence service does not consider Curveball a reliable source and that it has been unable to confirm the defector’s statements. [Washington Post, 5/21/2005] This information is sent directly to the office of CIA Director George Tenet. [Washington Post, 6/25/2006]

 

[bsnyder]

Here are some articles for you to consider. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/24/AR2006062401081.html This is a good timeline of all of the curveball silliness. http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/...omplete_timeline_of_the_2003_invasion_of_iraq

Do you even read the stuff you post?

That's your proof that Bush and Cheney lied? The only thing it's proof of is bureaucratic finger-pointing of truly epic proportions. Not one word about Bush and Cheney ever being informed.

But if one takes your view, it's also proof of my previous assertion - the cowardice of all those coming forward after the fact, when they could have spoken up prior to the war.

Like Drumheller. He could have gone to the Times. He did nothing. He's either a liar or a coward. Take your pick.

 

[TheDoctor]

This is fun. It is now clear that Bet and the law professors who attacked Judge Taylor owe her an apology. http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/

At the rate things are going, Judge Anna Diggs Taylor is going to be due a serious apology some time soon, if she isn't due one already. It turns out many of the "experts" who were widely cited to support the attacks on Judge Taylor's opinion were actually themselves quite misinformed about the basic matters governing her rulings.

Here, for instance, is a post from Orin Kerr which reflects a deep misunderstanding of the issues which Judge Taylor ruled on. I'm not trying to single him out. To the contrary, he's been commendably candid about his lack of expertise in (I would even say knowledge of) how civil litigation works (a modesty and candor which many lack). Yet despite his self-professed unfamiliarity with civil litigation, he was one of the most widely-quoted law professors by those wanting to disparage the quality of Judge Taylor's opinion, and the result of his lack of relevant knowledge (about both civil litigation rules generally and the events in this case) were some plainly misguided attacks.

In his post, Kerr responds to a point I (and others) have made -- that a principal reason why Judge Taylor was somewhat conclusory in her analysis of some issues, and the reason she repeatedly said that certain propositions were "undisputed," is because the Bush administration either failed or chose not to dispute them. Specifically, the Justice Department was so intent on telling the Judge that she had no right to even rule on these issues (because the NSA program is a "state secret," the legality of which the court cannot adjudicate without damaging national security and/or because the plaintiffs lack "standing"), that it basically chose not to address the merits of the plaintiffs' case at all.

Indeed, as I wrote about here at the time it happened, the DoJ twice tried to convince Judge Taylor not to rule on the substance of the ACLU's claim, but instead to rule first on the DoJ's "state secrets" argument. Twice, the court refused this request, ordering the DoJ to address the merits of the case (this Comment to Kerr's post, documents the case's procedural history). But the DoJ essentially refused to do so, and devoted almost all of its brief (.pdf) to arguing why the court lacked the power to adjudicate these issues, and almost none of its brief to arguing about the issues themselves. As Marty Lederman put it once he read the DoJ's Brief: it "did not quite advance or support in any detail that argument -- or any other merits argument, for that matter."

As this excellent Comment to Kerr's post reflects, the Bush administration's refusal to address the merits of the claims (which is part and parcel of its general contempt for the role of the courts in scrutinizing its conduct) meant that Judge Taylor was not only entitled, but was required by the Rules of Civil Procedure (Rule 56), to treat the ACLU's factual claims as undisputed for purposes of deciding the motion......

But far from being "bizarre," this proposition -- that facts which a party fails (for whatever reasons) to dispute on Summary Judgment are deemed "undisputed" by the court -- is one of the most basic principles of civil litigation in the federal courts, as any federal court litigator would know. Someone (such as Kerr) who is unaware of those rules might find it "bizarre" that the court repeatedly labelled as "undisputed" facts and propositions which Kerr himself might want to dispute, but given the DoJ's failure to dispute these propositions, the court was required to treat them as such. How can someone who is (a) unfamiliar with the case itself and (b) unfamiliar with the rules governing the key issues before the court be cited as the preeminent expert to opine that the court's opinion is so flawed?.....

It is true that there are parts of Judge Taylor's opinion which are surprisingly conclusory, but that does not necessarily make it flawed. It is amazing to watch virtually everyone who is trying to attack her opinion do so by making arguments which the DoJ never made in the case before her. A basic familiarity with this case and with the rules of civil procedure -- both of which many of her critics clearly lacked -- would reveal that Judge Taylor's opinion was infinitely more sound than the conventional wisdom (thanks to many of these law professors) now holds that it was.

The portions of the opinion that the socalled experts are objecting to are actually corrrect given the procedural history of this case. The attacks on this opinion are proving to be as false as bush's lies about Iraq's wmds.

 

[sodaseller]

Could you please point me to the "well established" proof that the information about Curveball ever made it beyond the CIA?

Actually, your question reveals much, because he reality is the exact iopposite of what you suggest. It is not a matter of whether the CIA shared their low estimation of Curveball's credibility with policymakers. The intel community never really got to assess him - he was with German intel.

That wasn't accidental - he "came in" to German intel because he was well coached - he was part of Chalabi's group. Chalabi had been trying to feed misinformation for years, to little avail. But then things changed, as Foer & Ackerman revealed at http://www.tnr.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20031201&s=ackermanfoer120103

According to his aides, Cheney had grown more convinced throughout the '90s of the futility of containing Saddam. In the early '90s, while Cheney was holed up at the American Enterprise Institute, his think-tank colleagues say he met Ahmed Chalabi and increasingly lent the Iraqi National Congress (INC) leader a sympathetic ear. In July 2000, Chalabi delighted over Cheney's vice-presidential nomination, boasting, "Cheney is good for us." He was right. Within two weeks of Bush's inauguration, Cheney helped free U.S. INC funding that had been bottlenecked during the Clinton administration. At the senior staff meetings, which considered Iraq policy almost every week during the first few months of the administration, Cheney's office supported efforts to topple Saddam through empowering the INC even further

That's right - the Iranian agent/charlatan that lacked credibility under the prior Administration was resurrected by Cheney, who personally vouched for him such that he sat behind the First Lady at the SOTU

During his stint as an adviser to Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Hannah had been one of the Clinton administration's most fervent INC supporters. Working for Cheney, he stayed in regular contact with the exile group. "He relied on Ahmed Chalabi for insights and advice," says a former Bush administration official. Cheney himself became an increasingly vocal Chalabi advocate. At an NSC meeting in the fall of 2002, the State Department and Pentagon feuded over releasing even more funding to the INC. In a rare burst of open influence, Cheney "weighed in, in a really big way," according to a former NSC staffer. "He said, 'We're getting ready to go to war, and we're nickel-and-diming the INC at a time when they're providing us with unique intelligence on Iraqi WMD.'"

A classified study prepared by the National Intelligence Council in early 2003 found that only one of Chalabi's defectors could be considered credible, The New Republic has learned. A more recent investigation undertaken by the DIA has found that practically all the intelligence provided by the INC was worthless.

Chalabi's crew was being coached to work around the CIA
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_05/003988.php

Ahmad Chalabi, the onetime White House favorite who has been implicated in an alleged Iranian spy operation, sent Iraqi defectors to at least eight Western spy services before the war in an apparent effort to dupe them about Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's illicit weapons programs, current and former U.S. intelligence officials said.

....Because even friendly spy services rarely share the identities of their informants or let outsiders meet or debrief their sources, it has only in recent months become clear that Chalabi's group sent defectors with inaccurate or misleading information to Denmark, England, Italy, France, Germany, Spain and Sweden, as well as to the United States, the officials said.

...."We had a lot of sources, but it was all coming from the same pot," said a former senior U.S. intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "They were all INC guys. And none of them panned out."

A U.S. official confirmed that defectors from Chalabi's organization had provided suspect information to numerous Western intelligence agencies. "It's safe to say he tried to game the system," the official said.

Let's not forget Jim Hoagland's bragging in trteal time about the CIA's skepticism about this type of "unique intelligence" being tamed

"The political leadership of the administration," says Post columnist Jim Hoagland today, "declared war on the careerists at the CIA soon after Bush's election. There should be no surprise that analysts who feel their insights have been scorned and attacked would use this opportunity to get even." But let's not forget how much of a soldier Hoagland was in that war. In a choice example, see this column from last October 20th on Bush's now-newly-controversial October 7th speech on the Iraqi threat. The material for the October 20th speech never would have made it out of the CIA had not President Bush's "determination to overthrow the Iraqi dictator" brought a such a "cultural change" to the Agency.

One breeze of change came in President Bush's Oct. 7 speech in Cincinnati. Among the terror-related items that were declassified for the speech was an agency finding that Iraq is developing "a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles" to deliver chemical and biological weapons on U.S. targets.

That was new stuff, delivered by a determined and effective CIA collection effort earlier this year. Agency information also allowed the president to assert (accurately) that "Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases."

That's actually old new stuff, stored in CIA files since the mid-1990s. But that intelligence was quietly buried during the Clinton years, when the need not to know very much about Iraq and terrorism was very strong.

This is how war is waged inside the CIA: The upstarts who are challenging the agency's long-standing and deeply flawed analysis of Iraq are being accused of "politicizing intelligence," a label that is a reputation-killer in the intelligence world. It is also a protective shield for analysts who do not want, any more than the rest of us, to acknowledge that they have been profoundly and damagingly mistaken.

There you have it - WaPo's Jim Hoagland, a Cheney loyalist, brags in October 2002 how teh CIA has been defeated, causing it to move away from "the old analysis of the Iraqis as a feckless, inert and inward-looking bunch of thugs", which in fact was accurate, in favor of "those willing to take a fresh, untilted look at all the evidence." And we know what that kind of eviodence was.

So in sum, your query reflects customary ignorance - the reality is exactly 180 degrees opposite of what you argue

 

[bsnyder]

Actually, your question reveals much, because he reality is the exact iopposite of what you suggest. It is not a matter of whether the CIA shared their low estimation of Curveball's credibility with policymakers. The intel community never really got to assess him - he was with German intel.

Not true, according to The Doctor.

Here are some articles for you to consider. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...6062401081.html
Quote:
In late January 2003, as Secretary of State Colin Powell prepared to argue the Bush administration's case against Iraq at the United Nations, veteran CIA officer Tyler Drumheller sat down with a classified draft of Powell's speech to look for errors. He found a whopper: a claim about mobile biological labs built by Iraq for germ warfare.

Drumheller instantly recognized the source, an Iraqi defector suspected of being mentally unstable and a liar. The CIA officer took his pen, he recounted in an interview, and crossed out the whole paragraph.

few days later, the lines were back in the speech. Powell stood before the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5 and said: "We have first-hand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails."

The sentence took Drumheller completely by surprise.

"We thought we had taken care of the problem," said the man who was the CIA's European operations chief before retiring last year, "but I turn on the television and there it was, again."

While the administration has repeatedly acknowledged intelligence failures over Iraqi weapons claims that led to war, new accounts by former insiders such as Drumheller shed light on one of the most spectacular failures of all: How U.S. intelligence agencies were eagerly drawn in by reports about a troubled defector's claims of secret germ factories in the Iraqi desert. The mobile labs were never found.

This is a good timeline of all of the curveball silliness. http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/...asion_of _iraq
Quote:
November 1999
Curveball, an Iraqi engineer in his late 20s, travels to Germany on a tourist visa and applies for political asylum telling German immigration officials that he embezzled money from the Iraqi government and fears prison or worse if he returns home. The Germans send him to Zirndorf, a refugee center near Nuremberg, where other Iraqi exiles seeking German visas are being held. There, he changes his story, telling German intelligence (BND) officers that in Iraq he designed laboratory equipment to convert trucks into biological weapons laboratories....

January 2000 - September 2001
But Curveball never says that he actually produced biological weapons or witnessed anyone else doing so and the BND is unable to verify his claims. Curveball’s statements are recorded in German, shared with a local Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) team, and sent to the US, where they are translated into English for analysis at the DIA’s directorate for human intelligence in Clarendon, Va. “This was not substantial evidence,” one senior German intelligence official later recalls in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “We made clear we could not verify the things he said.”

(January 2000-2003)
Iraqi informants cited in internal US intelligence reports dispute Curveball’s claims (see January 2000 - September 2001) that Iraq has mobile biological weapons factories. Some of the informants suggest that Curveball is actually referring to trailers designed to produce hydrogen for artillery weather balloons. [Washington Post, 4/12/2006]

(Early 2001)
MI6, Britain’s secret intelligence service, cables the CIA informing the agency that it “is not convinced that Curveball is a wholly reliable source” and that “elements of [his] behavior strike us as typical of ... fabricators,” according to a later investigation by the US Senate. The British also note that satellite images taken in 1997 when Curveball was presumably working at Djerf al Nadaf contradict his descriptions of the facility. [Los Angeles Times, 11/20/2005]

September 2002
Tyler Drumheller, the head of CIA spying in Europe, calls the German Intelligence (BND) station chief at the German embassy in Washington hoping to obtain permission to interview Curveball. Over lunch at a restaurant in Georgetown, the two discuss the case and the German officer tells Drumheller that Curveball is “crazy” [Los Angeles Times, 11/20/2005] and that the BND questions “whether Curveball [is] actually telling the truth.” [Washington Post, 5/21/2005] They think “he’s probably a fabricator,” the German says. Drumheller is also told that the BND will not give in to CIA requests to gain access to him. After the meeting, Drumheller and several aides get into bitter arguments with CIA analysts working on the Curveball case. “The fact is, there was a lot of yelling and screaming about this guy,” James Pavitt, chief of clandestine services, will later tell the Los Angeles Times. “My people were saying, ‘We think he’s a stinker.’” But CIA analysts remain supportive of Curveball’s account. In one meeting, the chief CIA analyst argues that material she found on the Internet corroborates Curveball’s account, to which the operations group chief for Germany retorts, “That’s where he got it too.” [Los Angeles Times, 11/20/2005]

January 27, 2003
The CIA’s Berlin station chief warns CIA headquarters that information on the alleged mobile biological units supplied by Iraqi defector “Curveball” should not be used in Bush’s state of the union speech. The station chief explains that the German intelligence service does not consider Curveball a reliable source and that it has been unable to confirm the defector’s statements. [Washington Post, 5/21/2005] This information is sent directly to the office of CIA Director George Tenet. [Washington Post, 6/25/2006]

Are you calling Tyler Drumheller a liar too? Or a coward, too?

BTW, your first link is not working.

 

[sodaseller]

True according to Drumheller - read it