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Title: Officials cite broad power for president in memos
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URL Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/terror_memos
Published: Mar 3, 2009
Author: Devlin Barrett And Matt Apuzzo
Post Date: 2009-03-03 09:05:41 by richard9151
Keywords: None
Views: 83
Comments: 4
By DEVLIN BARRETT and MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writers – 2 hrs 26 mins ago WASHINGTON – In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration determined that certain constitutional rights would not apply as the U.S. stepped up its response to terrorism, according to documents released to the public for the first time. In nine legal opinions disclosed Monday by the Obama administration, the Justice Department under President George W. Bush claimed exceptional search-and-seizure powers. Within two weeks of the 2001 attacks, government lawyers were discussing ways to wiretap U.S. conversations without warrants. Also revealed by the Obama administration in court documents Monday: The CIA destroyed nearly 100 videotapes — far more than previously known — of interrogations and other treatment of terror suspects. Congressional Democrats and other critics have charged that some of the harsh interrogation techniques amounted to torture, a contention that Bush and other officials rejected. The Bush administration eventually abandoned many of the legal conclusions, but the documents themselves had been closely held. By releasing them, President Barack Obama continued a house-cleaning of the Bush administration's most contentious policies. "Too often over the past decade, the fight against terrorism has been viewed as a zero-sum battle with our civil liberties," Attorney General Eric Holder said in a speech as the documents were being prepared for release. "Not only is that school of thought misguided, I fear that in actuality it does more harm than good." The legal memos written by the Bush administration's Office of Legal Counsel show a government grappling with how to wage war on terrorism in a fast-changing world. The conclusion, reiterated in page after page of documents, was that the president had broad authority to set aside constitutional rights. Fourth Amendment protections against unwarranted search and seizure, for instance, did not apply in the United States as long as the president was combatting terrorism, the Justice Department said in an Oct. 23, 2001, memo. "First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully," Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo wrote, adding later: "The current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically." On Sept. 25, 2001, Yoo discussed possible changes to the laws governing wiretaps for intelligence gathering. In that memo, he said the government's interest in keeping the nation safe following the terrorist attacks might justify warrantless searches. That memo did not specifically attempt to justify the government's warrantless wiretapping program, but it provided part of the foundation. Yoo, now a professor at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law, did not return messages seeking comment. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who served as White House counsel when many of the memos were written, did not immediately respond to a request for comment made through his attorney. The memos reflected a belief within the Bush administration that the president had broad powers that could not be checked by Congress or the courts. That stance, in one form or another, became the foundation for many policies: holding detainees at Guantanamo Bay, eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without warrants, using tough new CIA interrogation tactics and locking U.S. citizens in military brigs without charges. Obama has pledged to close the Guantanamo Bay prison within a year. He halted the CIA's intensive interrogation program. And last week, prosecutors moved the terrorism case against U.S. resident Ali Al-Marri, a suspected al-Qaida sleeper agent held in a military brig, to a civilian courthouse. A criminal prosecutor is wrapping up an investigation of the destruction of the tapes of interrogations. Monday's acknowledgment of videotape destruction, however, involved a civil lawsuit filed in New York by the American Civil Liberties Union. It is not clear what exactly was on the recordings. The government's letter cites interrogation videos, but the lawsuit against the Defense Department also seeks records related to treatment of detainees, any deaths of detainees and the CIA's sending of suspects overseas, known as "extraordinary rendition." At the White House, press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters he hadn't spoken to the president about the report, but he called the news about the videotapes "sad" and said Obama was committed to ending torture while also protecting American values. ACLU attorney Amrit Singh said the CIA should be held in contempt of court for holding back the information for so long.
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#1. To: richard9151 (#0)
(Edited)
The Constitution grants no such power to the President. If it did, it would make the document worthless, and what it does say would be pointless. And even if the Constitution did grant such power, it could not rightfully do so. The rights it recognizes are mostly human rights, which each human being intrinsically possesses. No one ever has any right to violate such rights, period. Whatever power the government has, or that any government official has, comes from the people--who can not grant powers they themselves do not have. If your neighbor doesn't have the right to violate your rights, then neither do all the neighbors on your block. And if they don't, then neither do all the residents of your city, county, State or nation. And so neither does the President.
The legal memos written by the Bush administration's Office of Legal Counsel show a government grappling with how to wage war on terrorism in a fast-changing world. The conclusion, reiterated in page after page of documents, was that the president had broad authority to set aside constitutional rights.
 | "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -- C. S. Lewis |
#2. To: richard9151 (#0)
holder is a gun-grabbing Socialist pig !
"If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”—Samuel Adams
#3. To: sourcery (#1)
Well now, that does depend, does it not, on who has the most guns? I do not think that there is any question that the mentality that has prevaded Washington, DC, since at least the time of the Civil War, is that might makes right. I would dare to say that this mentality probably started with George Washington when he crafted the order creating the federal overlay of the states in union with the federal states. The whiskey rebellion and his crushing of it with militia being a case in point. They believe it. They live it. They practice it.
And so neither does the President.
Daniel 2:44 “And in the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that will never be brought to ruin. And the kingdom itself will not be passed on to any other people. It will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, and it itself will stand to times indefinite;.
#4. To: richard9151 (#3)
True enough. However, it is easy to show that is only a de facto tyranny, which is not justified either by the literal text of the Constitution, nor by fundamental principles of either morality, or of the political philosophy of the country's Founders. That makes it possible at some point to have a Constitutional, legal overthrow of the de facto tyranny-- which can happen whenever conditions become ripe for it. The present crisis may present just such an opportunity--eventually.
They believe it. They live it. They practice it.
| "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -- C. S. Lewis |
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