ARTS & FARCES internet

Turns out George Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program was of questionable worth. Big surprise. Actually, the big surprise is that too few people in the government knew about the program to use it effectively for intelligence work.

Congress ordered a report on the program last year. The 38-page unclassified report (.pdf; 3Mb), produced by the inspectors general of five federal agencies—the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Department, the Justice Department, the National Security Agency, and the Office of National Intelligence—was released yesterday. The bulk of the inspectors findings remains classified. The inspectors found that “other intelligence tools used in assessing security threats posed by terrorists provided more timely and detailed information,” according to Eric Lichtblau’s and James Risen’s report for the New York Times. In fact, the report indicates that most intelligence officials “had difficulty citing specific instances” of the warrantless wiretapping program’s success in thwarting terrorists.

“The report also hinted at political pressure in preparing the so-called threat assessments that helped form the legal basis for continuing the classified program, whose disclosure in 2005 provoked fierce debate about its legality,” Lichtblau and Risen write. “The initial authorization of the wiretapping program came after a senior C.I.A. official took a threat evaluation, prepared by analysts who knew nothing of the program, and inserted a paragraph provided by a senior White House official that spoke of the prospect of future attacks against the United States.” The inspectors generals’ report referred to these threat assessments—which Bush used to reauthorize the program every 45 days—as the “scary memos.”

The inspectors generals’ report notes that Alberto Gonzales, former attorney general, provided “confusing, inaccurate” statements about NSA surveillance activities to Congress but did not “intend to mislead” the US lawmakers. The report characterizes former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo‘s legal opinions—the ones Bush used to justify his warrantless wiretapping program—as “flawed.” The report also states then-President Bush authorized other surveillance programs that “the government has never publicly acknowledged.” Lichtblau and Risen source unnamed officials as saying “those programs included data mining of e-mail messages of Americans.”

While the report concludes the Bush administration failed to adquately review the legality of the warrantless wiretapping program, it—amazingly—does not conclude Bush’s program was illegal. It’s highly suspect that Yoo didn’t issue his legal opinion to Bush endorsing the program until weeks after it was underway. Yoo’s manager at the Justice Department, Jay Bybee, had no knowledge of the warrantless wiretapping program’s existence, according to the report. Lichtblau and Risen go on to report, “Moreover, Mr. Ashcroft [former attorney general] gave his legal authorization to the program for the first two and a half years based on a ‘misimpression’ of what activities the N.S.A. was actually conducting. In March 2004, a showdown occurred in Mr. Ashcroft’s hospital room when top Justice Department officials refused to sign off on the legality of the program and threatened to resign. The report said that the White House had the program continue by having Mr. Gonzales, then the White House counsel, sign the authorization.” Thanks to the long memory of the interwebs, the Congressional testimony of James Comey, former deputy attorney general, is still available and all the more meaningful in light of the inspectors generals’ report.

In 2008, Congress amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to give the “government even broader authority to intercept international communications,” according to the inspector generals’ report. That would be the same law that granted legal immunity to the telecommunications companies that cooperated with the warrantless wiretapping program. That would be the same law that President Barack Obama campaigned against—threatened to filibuster, even—and then voted for.

But here’s the story in the story: Former CIA Director George Tenet, former Attorney Generl John Ashcroft, Dick Cheney’s top aide, David Addington, and John Yoo all declined to be interviewed by the inspectors general for the inquiry.

Four simple questions:

1. How much money was spent on the warrantless wiretapping program?
2. Since the bulk of the inspector generals’ report is classified, and because key players have refused to cooperate with the inquiry, what else don’t we know?
3. When can we expect the 2008 FISA amendments to be rolled back?
4. When do the trials start?

Update: Saturday, 11 July 2009 09:23PM CDT: Scott Shane, writing for the New York Times, cites two unnamed sources who claim Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director Leon Panetta has told the US Senate and House intelligence committees that the agency “withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney.” Shane reports that Panetta “ended the program when he first learned of its existence from subordinates on June 23….” and briefed both intelligence committees about it.

Cheney’s legal adviser, David Addington, personally approved every individual that was told about the warrantless wiretapping program. And then there’s this: “High-level N.S.A. officials who were responsible for ensuring that the surveillance program was legal, including the agency’s inspector general and general counsel, were not permitted by Mr. Cheney’s office to read the Justice Department opinion that found the eavesdropping legal, several officials said.”

That was the sound of the other shoe dropping.