Ryan Singel | Wired.com Just days before the Senate will convene to give a final blessing to President Bush’s secret, warrantless wiretapping program, a federal court judge ruled that his legal justification for the surveillance has no legal merit.

He’s the same judge Congress is trying to save the nation’s telecoms, such as AT&T, Verizon and Sprint, from having to face in court.

Late Wednesday, U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker issued a ruling(.pdf) in a case against the government alleging illegal spying, finding that in 1978 Congress had clearly set out the rules for wiretapping inside the United States and that Bush’s claims to have inherent authority outside of those rules did not pass Constitutional muster.

Congress appears clearly to have intended to — and did — establish the exclusive  means for foreign intelligence surveillance activities to be conducted. Whatever power the executive may otherwise have had in this regard, FISA limits the power of the executive branch to conduct such activities and it limits the executive branch’s authority to assert the state secrets privilege in response to challenges to the legality of its foreign intelligence surveillance activities. 

Walker, the chief judge of the Northern District of California, affirmed that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act is the exclusive legal method for conducting surveillance inside the United States against suspected spies and terrorist. The Bush Administration argues that Congress’s vote to authorize military force against Al Qaeda and the president’s inherent war time powers were exceptions to the exclusivity provision.

Not so, according to Walker:

This provision and its legislative history left no doubt that Congress intended to displace entirely the various warrantless wiretapping and surveillance programs undertaken by the executive branch and to leave no room for the president to undertake warrantless surveillance in the domestic sphere in the future. 

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Ryan Singel | Wired.com

Mark Klein, the retired AT&T engineer who stepped forward with the technical documents at the heart of the anti-wiretapping case against AT&T, is furious at the Senate’s vote on Wednesday night to hold a vote on a bill intended to put an end to that lawsuit and more than 30 others.

[Wednesday]’s vote by Congress effectively gives retroactive immunity to the telecom companies and  endorses an all-powerful president. It’s a Congressional coup against the Constitution.

The Democratic leadership is touting the deal as a “compromise,” but in fact they have endorsed the infamous Nuremberg defense: “Just following orders.” The judge can only check their paperwork. This cynical deal is a Democratic exercise in deceit and cowardice.

Klein saw a network monitoring room being built in AT&T’s internet switching center that only NSA-approved techs had access to. He squirreled away documents and then presented them to the press and the Electronic Frontier Foundation after news of the government’s warrantless wiretapping program broke.

Wired.com independently acquired a copy of the documents (.pdf) — which were under court seal — andpublished the wiring documents in May 2006 so that they could be evaluated.

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The Bush Administration steps up its secret moves against Iran.

Seymour Hersh | NewYorker.com

Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.

Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of “high-value targets” in the President’s war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.

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FealGoodFoundation.com

Washington, D.C. - May 9th, 2008, 10 bipartisan New York Members of Congress sharply rebuked a new report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on the status of the federal government’s response to the health impacts of the 9/11 attacks.  HHS’s report (click here for a full copy), which was requested by Congress in the FY 2008 federal Labor-HHS appropriations bill, revealed that the Bush Administration has no plans to spend congressionally-approved funding to treat and monitor lower Manhattan residents, area workers, students and others who were exposed to the toxic aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.  In addition, HHS failed to provide, again as requested by Congress, a “long-term, comprehensive federal plan for monitoring, screening, analysis and medical treatment for all individuals who were exposed to the toxins at the World Trade Center site.”

Please click here to read the entire Press Release on our Bulletin page.

Alex Jones talks with Arizona Senator Karen Johnson, who believes there was a 9/11 cover-up,listen here.

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Open letter to congress from Ken at WeAreChangeSeattle.org:

Since the recently released, but long supressed, NIE Report stating the opposite of what the executive branch has been stating for months while trying to lead us to war with Iran reveals that the dangers posed by Iran are completely hyped lies. Does this mean the irrational and lemming-like supposed fear of at least some in congress that if they moved on impeachment that this would lead to an attack on Iran can now subside? Does this mean that impeachment CAN be not only on the table but can be moved upon aggressively?

Thanks. I’d greatly appreciate it, as would most of our citizens.

source: http://thinkprogress.org/2007/12/03/hadley-nie/

-Ken