Was Data Mining on People Within the US At the Root of Scene in Ashcroft's Hospital Room?

If you've been able to follow the bouncing ball in the spying on us that the Bush administration has been doing and sometimes not acknowledging you might know that there were at least two kinds of breaks with FISA, the eavesdropping  on  overseas calls and the data mining on calls and Internet activity that stays even within the US. 

But what we are being told shows an Attorney General that the Washington Post notes has questionable trustworthiness.

The eavesdropping on overseas calls (which the White House claims can have one foot in the US because AT&T has redefined the constitution for us) has been acknowledged.  The Data mining hasn't.  Now a New York Times article "Mining of Data Prompted Fight Over U.S. Spying " puts a lot of the pieces together with Alberto Gonzales recent testimonies for us.  But do they have it correct. See the Newsweek analysis below on more semantic games by Karl Rove via Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

They also remind us that they held back their report on the overseas call eavesdroppping from "2004" to December 2005.  They do not mention that the 2004 date was before Bush's reelection and, in fact, they hid very important information from us before the election of 2004.  We need to remember that, whenever we think that the NY Times is in any way on our side, or even "liberal".

They remind us of Gonzales's recent testimony that he only went to the attorney general's bedside to tell him what Congressional leaders had said, not to pressure him.  

Tom Daschle said the other day that, if that had happened, he --as one of those Congressional leaders-- would have been involved, but it didn't.  

In fact,  Alberto Gonzales may have stepped over a line with some of his testimony especially his assertion that there had never been any disagreement within the Bush administration about the Terrorist Surveillance Program.  

Newsweek's Ishikoff reports that Senator Spector thinks that some of Gonzales recent testimony may be so misleading as to constitute an "actionable offense".

Ishikoff thinks that since the name Terrorist Surveillance Program was not tied to the eavesdropping program until 2005, Gonzales gives himself a pass on that.  

Apparent evidence to the contrary is strong: a letter written last year by then-Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte described the March '04 briefing as being about the "Terrorist Surveillance Program"; and Mueller himself testified last week the dispute was about the "much discussed" NSA program.

The new dispute is, in part, a semantic game. The name "Terrorist Surveillance Program" wasn't used by the White House until December 2005. By that time, the program had been scaled back because of protests from Comey and others at the Justice Department. Justice officials insisted last week Gonzales has always been careful to limit his statements to the publicly disclosed TSP, implying that his comments do not refer to the program as it existed before late '05. The A.G.'s testimony "was and remains accurate," a spokesman says.

The Newsweek article also notes that the Democrats are stepping up pressure and have a doomsday (my description) witness for the AG.  Someone (I am assuming) from the Bush administration himself:

Jack L. Goldsmith, the former chief of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel. It was Goldsmith who wrote a key opinion concluding the eavesdropping program was illegal. A conservative lawyer now at Harvard, Goldsmith, who declined to comment, will have every incentive to talk. He is due to publish a new book this fall called "The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration." According to its Amazon.com listing, the book will chronicle how the president's "apparent indifference to human rights has damaged his presidency." On the cover are pictures of Bush, Cheney—and Gonzales.

The Post article (at identified link above) reminds us that Gonzales started out early in his AG career with questionable honesty.  In fact he started before he took the office.

When Alberto R. Gonzales was asked during his January 2005 confirmation hearing whether the Bush administration would ever allow wiretapping of U.S. citizens without warrants, he initially dismissed the query as a "hypothetical situation."

But when Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) pressed him further, Gonzales declared: "It is not the policy or the agenda of this president to authorize actions that would be in contravention of our criminal statutes."

By then, however, the government had been conducting a secret wiretapping program for more than three years without court oversight, possibly in conflict with federal intelligence laws. Gonzales had personally defended the effort in fierce internal debates...  

The Post is the clear winner this time in hitting the attorney general hard (often through quotes from other people). 

In my opinion, Gonzales would be gone in any sane administration.  Earlier reports that I have blogged on show that Gonzales protects the president, and even now it could be a way to draw off impeachment fire from Bush and Cheney. 

tags: gonzalez  ashcroft  attorney general  arlen spector  congress  bush  bush administration  

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