From the Associated Press:
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday that President Bush personally blocked Justice Department lawyers from pursuing an internal probe of the warrantless eavesdropping program that monitors Americans’ international calls and e-mails when terrorism is suspected.
The department’s Office of Professional Responsibility announced earlier this year it could not pursue an investigation into the role of Justice lawyers in crafting the program, under which the National Security Agency intercepts some telephone calls and e-mail without court approval.
At the time, the office said it could not obtain security clearance to examine the classified program.
Under sharp questioning from Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter, Gonzales said that Bush would not grant the access needed to allow the probe to move forward.
Thanks to reader Allen Asch for the link.
Saith the Washington Post:
in a series of memos to Gonzales’s deputy also released today, OPR chief H. Marshall Jarrett noted that “a large team of attorneys and agents” assigned to a criminal investigation of the disclosure of the NSA program were promptly granted the same clearances. He also noted that numerous other investigators and officials–including the members of a civil-liberties board–had been granted access to or briefed on the program.
He also noted that numerous other investigators and officials–including the members of a civil-liberties board–had been granted access to or briefed on the program.
Not to mention any number of employees at the various telecom companies, people who don’t even work for the government.
And random people that brag about it at bar association meetings.
Is there any innocent explanation for this denial? I’m not one of those Democrats who favors impeachment (as long as there’s a 22nd Amendment, why waste time inaugurating President Cheney for 1+ years), but do obstruction of justice statutes apply? Even if it doesn’t fit 18 USC 1501 et seq., isn’t it literally obstruction of Justice?
[OK Comments: I can't think of a reason why this would be illegal.]
I generally agree with Orin, in that there isn’t any reason why it is illegal. Indeed, OPR, IIRC doesn’t have any statutory jurisdiction. But, strangely, I seem to recall a time where DOJ argued that OPR was going to take care of all attorney-discipline matters, so nobody else should worry about it. Rightly rejected.
Interestingly, Alberto didn’t address whether listening in on anyone’s conversations is ethical or not. Indeed, assuming that the president has the power to do this, a lawyer might not be ethically capable of participating. (Sort of like states and using anesthesiologists to execute people.)
But, whatever, this is going to be settled politically. Not legally. not ethnically. Things might change when NSA employees start leaking details of funny intercepted conversations for political reasons.
Orin:
I don’t know how to link to Jack Balkin’s piece on the two views of the “unitary executive,” but his post captures the importance of some sort of outside-the-executive-branch oversight on the executive branch’s activities in general and those of its participants in particular. . . which Bush’s decision seems to preclude.