Tit For Tat – NYT vs. Cheney

July 30, 2007

In yesterday’s piece about NSA data-mining and the Gonzales lies the NYT notes:

The first known assertion by administration officials that there had been no serious disagreement within the government about the legality of the N.S.A. program came in talks with New York Times editors in 2004. In an effort to persuade the editors not to disclose the eavesdropping program, senior officials repeatedly cited the lack of dissent as evidence of the program’s lawfulness.

The NYT editors at that time swallowed the administration’s lies and only reluctantly published the story that unveiled the NSA spying in December 2005 when the author James Risen threatened to break it in his book.

But now, as the editors have to eat another major craw fed to them by Cheney/Bush (the Judith Miller plant being the first), they decided it is payback time.

In an unsigned editorial also published yesterday and urging for Gonzales impeachment, they remark:

[Mr. Mueller and James Comey] say that in March 2004 — when Mr. Gonzales was still the White House counsel — the Justice Department refused to endorse a continuation of the wiretapping program because it was illegal. (Mr. Comey was running the department temporarily because Attorney General John Ashcroft had emergency surgery.) Unwilling to accept that conclusion, Vice President Dick Cheney sent Mr. Gonzales and another official to Mr. Ashcroft’s hospital room to get him to approve the wiretapping.

If that is indeed so, it so far has not been published anywhere else. No sources are given here, but as Josh Marshall muses:

Editorials like these are sometimes a venue where facts are stuck in which are ‘known’ to be true but which cannot be sourced cleanly or clearly enough to make it onto the news pages. Is that what’s up here?

Maybe. What I sense here is a group of quite angry people who have publicly been taken for a ride twice and feel the need for some serious revenge.

Not that I mind. Not at all …

Which leads me to some legal questions. Could one construct Gonzales effort to get a signature from the
incapacitated Ashcroft for an obviously illegal program as an attempt to
obstruct justice? Is it criminal to incite or direct someone to attempt
obstruction of justice? Impeachable?

I wonder if that is what the editors have in mind …

Posted by b on July 30, 2007 at 13:50 UTC | Permalink

Comments

It’s a throwaway line. Hardly anyone has noticed, so it’s like the proverbial tree falling in the forest. If no one in the msm comments on it, it didn’t happen.

Posted by: sunny | Jul 30 2007 17:58 utc | 1

The way this works is that if Cheney doesn’t dismiss it or attack it as scurrilous rumor of the most vile and baseless nature — then it is true.
This is known as a non-denial denial.

Posted by: Antifa | Jul 30 2007 19:16 utc | 2

the nyt is finally saying what anyone following the news has known for a long long time. the reason gonzo says there was no dissent in the government is because to them, they are the government. anyone who doesn’t go along doesn’t count. why wasn’t this written up as a news report? weird.

Posted by: annie | Jul 30 2007 20:54 utc | 3

@ annie #3,
Not just “to them, they are the government”, they are the government and defacto the only government.
on top of the Patriot and Homeland Security Act we in the USofA now have:
the Military Commissions Act of 2006:
Bush or proxy can declare anybody an “enemy combatant” and nullifies Habeas Corpus.
the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007:
Bush can assume full control of any or every state’s National Guard.
and finally (certainly not finally but what else is needed?)
the Presidential Singing Order signed by Bush on July 17, 2007:
Essentially puts any dissident of the Iraq War, ie., the Bush administration, in jeopardy of being disappeared.
Add to all this, FALCON (Federal And Local Cops Organized Nationally) which to date in two years has rounded up over 30,000 in three coordinated sweeps (none with a terrorist related charge) and the police apparatus is fine tuned to round up any presidentially declared groups of dissidents.
Detention Centers? An unknown but a reasonably probable reality. We’ll see.
Bush, defacto, now has the full legal dictatorial control of all US citizen’s lives. We now quite literally exist at the tyrant’s mercy.
When Bush said during his first presidential campaign, “I don’t believe in dictatorship unless I’m the dictator” how many people who heard that didn’t laugh?

Posted by: Juannie | Jul 30 2007 23:23 utc | 4

@Juannie et al
Has anyone written a serious and comprehensive piece on all these laws, whether in the blogosphere or MSM, that you know of? If not, someone should.
Also, re: this thread, here is some additional food for thought (to keep you up at night): $1.8 million study finds electronic voting machines in California easy to hack. (Surprise, surprise.)

Posted by: Bea | Jul 31 2007 0:02 utc | 5

Bea,
I don’t know of any such comprehensive piece on all these laws, and for this evening I cannot even reconstruct how I put all these acts together into a comprehensive dictatorial whole. I did it reading a whole bunch of sources when trying to put together a credible argument to my house congressman whom I had a chance to personally confront last Sat. I have the hand written notes that I constructed for reference before approaching him but I didn’t source my notes and now I am at a loss to offer much other than search the acts on line and make your own judgement.
But your point is well taken, if anyone at the bar could research and write that comprehensive piece, it would/could be very powerful anti–propaganda propaganda. I know my limitations but long for the help. Any takers?

Posted by: Juannie | Jul 31 2007 0:59 utc | 6

Juannie, what signing order on July 17th are you referring to? GWB signed an Executive Order on that date that covered freezing of property, but not what you mentioned, that I know about.

Posted by: Pyrrho | Jul 31 2007 1:02 utc | 7

chris floyd on that 17th signing
Nightmare on Main Street: More on Bush’s Anti-Dissent Order

…Dave [Neiwert at Orcinus] has featured a long – and highly disturbing – piece of informed legal analysis of the order from one of his regular commenters, attorney Den Valdron. who draws out the very dangerous implications of the order’s wording in convincing detail. Perhaps most disturbing is Valdron’s insight that the executive order doesn’t even have to be formally invoked in order to have a chilling effect on political dissent. Just its mere existence – and the ever-present threat of social and legal obliteration that it represents – will be enough to quell all but the hardiest opponents of the Leader’s criminal rampage in Iraq.
You should scoot on ever to Orcinus and read “That Executive Order” in full, but below is an excerpt about the “chill factor” that Valdron identifies:

Essentially, in this Executive Order the President is assuming unbelievably vast powers to simply sidestep normal criminal or civil procedure, and to operate quite explicitly on the basis of guilt by anticipation, guilt by pre-emption, guilt by association and guilt for any reason in the mind of the decider. There is literally no limitation on authority, except that the person’s actual physical being is unaffected.
However, a person so designated by this Order could be rendered into a non-person literally instantaneously. They could be stripped of every asset, have every financial or commercial opportunity denied to them. Worse, this literally creates a power to shun. Anyone who employs this person, who hires them, who pays them for work, lends them money to tide them over, who rents them an apartment, or allows them to sleep on the couch, who drops them a few coins as they panhandle would be liable to becoming subject to this order. The only protection would be to fire this person, to not hire them, to not pay them, to not lend them money, evict them from your apartment, kick them off the couch, and look away if you see them begging on the street.

Posted by: b real | Jul 31 2007 3:56 utc | 8

Thanks for that, B Real. I hadn’t read between the words of that Executive Order through to their logical possibilities. Frightening ones, at that. Fuck, man. Every time I think I’ve become so jaded and burnt out on outrage, it’s like something new is always waiting for me around the corner.
If I could somehow just store and convert the anger the U.S. government invokes within me, I wouldn’t need oil. I doubt any of us would.

Posted by: Pyrrho | Jul 31 2007 7:51 utc | 9

Perhaps we can write to Glenn Greenwald and make this suggestion (writing a piece about all these laws). He seems to be able to crank this stuff out really well. Does anyone know him?
I would take it on but I can’t do this until I get back from vacation (currently away) which will be a while. If no one else has stepped up I will see what I can cobble together later in the summer.
Thanks Juannie for the list.

Posted by: Bea | Aug 1 2007 1:19 utc | 10

wow, excellent response juannie, thanks. and to b real for the followup.
we need a good comprehensive flushing of this in the blogisphere..at the least.

Posted by: annie | Aug 2 2007 18:01 utc | 11

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