Justice Department's Black Site (Hentoff / Village Voice)

The administration censors internal probe of law breaking by the Oval Office and the NSA

by Nat Hentoff
June 4th, 2006 2:52 PM

The president has already made clear that his definition of what is legal applies to virtually anything he chooses to authorize in the name of national security. . . . Mr. Bush's doctrine, which some call the 'new imperial presidency,' strikes at the heart of America's constitutional separation of powers. Lead editorial Financial Times, May 13

... In January, four congressional Democrats—Maurice Hinchey of New York, John Lewis of Georgia, and Henry Waxman and Lynn Woolsey of California—asked the Office of Professional Responsibility to find out who in the Justice Department told the president and General Michael Hayden (then head of the National Security Agency) that it was legal for the NSA to engage in warrantless eavesdropping on Americans as well as in collection of their records (as recently revealed by USA Today). A corollary question was whether George W. Bush started the eavesdropping program even before he told the Justice Department he was doing it ...

On May 11, H. Marshall Jarrett, the OPR's counsel, told Congressman Hinchey that the investigation was over because the National Security Agency—obviously involved in the probe—refused to grant the OPR's lawyers security clearance to proceed to look into the NSA's classified programs. Said the frustrated Mr. Jarrett: "Without those clearances, we cannot investigate this matter and therefore have closed our investigation." ...

This would not be the first time in this administration that an investigation of the Justice Department demanded by members of Congress was shut down. Ari Shapiro, National Public Radio's astute investigative reporter, noted in the interview with Fein that "in February, the White House blocked a Senate inquiry into the NSA's eavesdropping by refusing to allow former attorney general John Ashcroft and his deputy to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about reported internal controversy over the program." ...

http://villagevoice.com/news/0623,hentoff,73418,6.html

<lots of quotes from different folk, gathered together>