The full text of the letter is below the fold:

April 3, 2008

The Honorable Michael Mukasey ?Attorney General of the United States ?U.S. Department of Justice ?950 Pennsylvania Ave., NW ?Washington, DC 20530

Dear Mr. Attorney General:

We are writing about two disturbing recent revelations concerning the actions and inactions by the Department of Justice and the federal government to combat terrorism. These include a public statement by you that appears to suggest a fundamental misunderstanding of the federal government’s existing surveillance authority to combat terrorism, as well as possible malfeasance by the government prior to 9/11, and the partial disclosure of the contents of a secret Department memorandum concerning Executive Branch authority to combat terrorism, which has been previously requested to be provided to Congress. We ask that you promptly provide that memorandum and that you clarify your public statement in accordance with the questions below.

First, according to press reports, in response to questions at a March 27 speech, you defended Administration wiretapping programs and proposals to change the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) by referring to a pre-9/11 incident. Before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, you stated, “we knew that there had been a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn’t know precisely where it went. You’ve got 3,000 people who went to work that day, and didn’t come home, to show for that.”1

This statement is very disturbing for several reasons. Initially, despite extensive inquiries after 9/11, I am aware of no previous reference, in the 9/11 Commission report or elsewhere, to a call from a known terrorist safe house in Afghanistan to the United States which, if it had been intercepted, could have helped prevent the 9/11 attacks. In addition, if the Administration had known of such communications from suspected terrorists, they could and should have been intercepted based on existing FISA law. For example, even assuming that a FISA warrant was required to intercept such calls, as of 9/11 FISA specifically authorized such surveillance on an emergency basis without a warrant for a 48 hour period.2 If such calls were known about and not intercepted, serious additional concerns would be raised about the government’s failure to take appropriate action before 9/11.

Accordingly, we ask that you promptly answer the following questions:

1. Were you referring to an actual pre-9/11 incident in the portion of your statement quoted above? If not, what were you referring to?

2. Do you believe that a FISA warrant would have been required to intercept a telephone call from a known terrorist safe house in Afghanistan to the United States in 2001? If so, please explain.

3. Even assuming that such a warrant would have been required, do you agree that even before 9/11, FISA authorized emergency interception without a warrant for a 48-hour period of phone calls from a known terrorist safe house in Afghanistan to the United States?

4. Assuming that you were referring to an actual pre-9/11 incident in your statement, please explain why such phone calls were not intercepted and appropriately utilized by federal government authorities in seeking to prevent terrorist attacks.

Second, in the March, 2003 Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memorandum publicly released on April 1, 2008, the contents of a secret October, 2001 OLC memorandum were partially disclosed. Specifically, the 2003 memorandum explains that in an October 23, 2001 memorandum, OLC “concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations.”3 On two prior occasions – in letters of February 12 and February 20, 2008, – Chairman Conyers requested that the Administration publicly release the October 23, 2001, memorandum .4 The memorandum has not been received despite these specific requests.

Based on the title of the October 23, 2001 memorandum, and based on what has been disclosed and the contents of similar memoranda issued at roughly the same time, it is clear that a substantial portion of this memorandum provides a legal analysis and conclusions as to the nature and scope of the Presidential Commander in Chief power to accomplish specific acts within the United States. The people of the United States are entitled to know the Justice Department’s interpretation of the President’s constitutional powers to wage war in the United States. There can be no actual basis in national security for keeping secret the remainder of a legal memorandum that addresses this issue of Constitutional interpretation. The notion that the President can claim to operate under “secret” powers known only to the President and a select few subordinates is antithetical to the core principles of this democracy. We ask that you promptly release the October 23, 2001, memorandum.

Please provide your responses and direct any questions to the Judiciary Committee office, 2138 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515 (tel:202-225-3951; fax: 202-225-7680). Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

John Conyers, Jr. ?Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary

Jerrold Nadler ?Chairman, Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties

Robert C. “Bobby” Scott ?Chairman, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security

Of course, sternly worded letters are not very impressive in DC these days, given that the Bush administration regularly ignores any and all demands from Congress for information. The ‘Unitary Executive’ policy that Dick Cheney has worked so hard to institute for so many decades does not have room for a Constitutional separation of powers or any respect for the Congressional duty of oversight.

I predict Mukasey will ignore this demand as well, and that Bush will assert presidential privilege to prevent him from talking to the Judiciary Committee. But at least We the People can see that some members of Congress still take their oaths and jobs seriously, which is a hopeful sign for the future. Or maybe it’s all just for show.

Our ever-vigilant U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey committed a major faux-pas last week when trying to work up some crocodile tears during a speech touting “necessary” domestic spying in San Francisco. Attempting to blame a lack of power-to-spy for the 3,000 American fatalities on September 11, 2001, Mukasey revealed…

Officials “shouldn’t need a warrant when somebody with a phone in Iraq picks up a phone and calls somebody in the United States because that’s the call that we really want to know about. And before 9-11, that’s the call we didn’t know about. We knew that there was a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn’t know precisely where it went.”

Holy Moley, Batman!!! Did the AG just tell us something nobody in the BushCo administration bothered to tell the 9-11 Commission during its investigation? That US officials KNEW of a call from an Al Queda “safe house” in Afghanistan to someone in the United States, but didn’t listen in because they were scared of breaking the law?

Is Mukasey trying to tell us that US intelligence agencies – including NSA who monitors virtually ALL telecommunications, and the CIA who knows where Al Queda’s “safe houses” are – have no understanding of the FISA law that has been on the books since 1978? What in the world DO they teach these spooks at training camp?

Fact of the matter is that not only does FISA (and other intelligence rules and regulations) allow tapping of the Afghanistan phone line, it allows – and has always allowed – immediate surveillance of the call on both ends, including the receiver here in the states for a full 72 hours without any kind of warrant! All they had to do was listen in, and if it were about planning the terrorist acts on 9-11, take it to the FISA court, get the warrant retroactively, and all the evidence recorded is usable in court against the plotters. Heck, they could have listened in anyway to the U.S. receiver and never bothered with a warrant, they just couldn’t use that tap as evidence in court later on (presuming they bust the perps instead of simply take ‘em out).

Writer and Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald has been on top of the story. Says Greenwald in his latest post…

“Yesterday, I contacted Lee Hamilton, the 9/11 Commission Vice Chairman, to ask him whether the Commission was ever told about Mukasey’s alleged Afghan Terrorist 9/11-planning telephone calls and/or the Bush administration’s failure/inability to eavesdrop on such calls. Hamilton refused to comment, first claiming that he was in meetings all day yesterday and had no time to talk to me. When asked if he would comment today or whenever he had the time, he said he was not going to comment on this ever, since he had not read Mukasey’s speech. Calls to 9/11 Executive Director Philip Kelikow seeking comment were not returned and 9/11 Commission Chairman Tom Kean could not yet be reached.”

I think the situation is fairly obvious. Either Mukasey is flat-out lying in order to promote BushCo’s unwarranted power grab and declaration of retroactive immunity for illegal domestic spying, or BushCo knows a lot more about what happened on 9-11 (and who was involved, before the act) than they were willing to tell the American people or the duly constituted and empowered investigation of those events.

Greenwald’s update on the story cites 9-11 Commission Executive Director Philip Kelikow as dismissing Mukasey’s revelation as immaterial to the investigation. Apparently he just made it up on the spot to gain sympathy for retroactive immunity and expanded spying powers.

How willing are we to buy that excuse?

Links:

Michael Mukasey’s tearful lies
Priorities

The Pentagon announced on February 11 that it is charging six detainees at Guantanamo Bay with war crimes, and will be seeking the death penalty for all. According to ex-JAG officers, it has already been decided that all will be convicted, and all will die. The highlights will be secret evidence and confessions gathered under torture from people who have been held for years sans habeas corpus.

Ross Tuttle’s Rigged Trials at Gitmo appears online from The Nation. Looks like BushCo are fixing to compound their own war crimes. Col. Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor for Gitmo’s military commissions detailed a conversation with Pentagon general counsel William Haynes, who now oversees the tribunal process for the Department of Defense…

“[Haynes] said these trials will be the Nuremberg of our time,” recalled Davis, referring to the Nazi tribunals in 1945, considered the model of procedural rights in the prosecution of war crimes. In response, Davis said he noted that at Nuremberg there had been some acquittals, something that had lent great credibility to the proceedings.

“I said to him that if we come up short and there are some acquittals in our cases, it will at least validate the process,” Davis continued. “At which point, [Haynes's] eyes got wide and he said, ‘Wait a minute, we can’t have acquittals. If we’ve been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them off? We can’t have acquittals, we’ve got to have convictions.’”

FBI translator Sibel Edmonds

Britain’s Sunday Times published an article on January 6 entitled For Sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets, detailing the extraordinary claims of FBI whistleblower Sibel Edmonds about how corrupt US government officials allowed Pakistan and other states to ’steal’ nuclear weapons secrets. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a real “bombshell” that ties together many years’ worth of nefarious dealings in the Middle East by officials charged specifically with the task of protecting those nuclear weapons secrets from theft by the very people who were allowed to ’steal’ them!

Edmonds, a Turkish language translator before turning whistleblower, listened to hundreds of sensitive communications intercepted by the FBI while she was stationed at the FBI’s D.C. field office, described to the Sunday Times how foreign intelligence agents enlisted the support of US officials to establish a network of ‘moles’ inside sensitive US military and nuclear installations. The officials involved included one well-known senior official in the US State Department, whom Edmonds says was being paid by Turkish agents in D.C. Those Turks then sold the information to black market buyers, including Pakistan.

The Times did not reveal the name of that State Department official, but did contact him about Edmonds’ allegations which he denied strongly. Yet according to Edmonds, who is currently forbidden from speaking about her knowledge in the US by judicial gag order…

“He was aiding foreign operatives against US interests by passing them highly classified information, not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position and political objectives.”

Edmonds further claims that the FBI was gathering evidence against senior Pentagon officials – including some well-known to the public – who were also aiding foreign agents. Her revelations illustrate just how much US officials aided countries such as Pakistan to acquire nuclear weapons technology. In turn, Pakistani scientist A.Q. Khan sold nuclear weapons technology to rogue states like Libya, Iran and North Korea – violating every sense of nuclear non-proliferation treaties and protections. US-backed military dictator Pervez Musharraf (lately implicated in the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto) pardoned Khan, who is seen as a national hero in Pakistan for his contributions to their nuclear weapons program.

For those who have not been following Edmonds’ case, she has given testimony and evidence in closed sessions of Congress and to the 9-11 commission, with key testimony remaining secret. She is now divulging some of that information in defiance of the gag order after becoming disillusioned with US authorities’ failure to act.

Political blogger Chris Floyd writes a fine overview of how Edmonds’ latest revelations ties in with the notorious activities of BCCI [Bank of Credit and Commercial International], which a US Senate investigation called “one of the largest criminal enterprises in history.” BCCI was a prime vehicle for clandestine nuclear proliferation (among other things), while also being used by the CIA and the Reagan and Bush-I White House as cover and financier for covert operations including military and financial support for Saddam Hussein back when he was our ally instead of our worst enemy. On a side note, BCCI also once gave G.W. Bush $25 million to bail him out of one of his many business catastrophes.

Floyd’s article, The Bomb in the Shadows: Proliferation, Corruption and the Way of the World is a worthy read for background and historical information linked to the revelations of ongoing US involvement in nuclear proliferation from Edmonds.

The ties are myriad and twisted, the implications very serious. The full report of the Senate’s 1992 investigation of BCCI (which left several big boulders unturned) is available in full from the Federation of American Scientists. If you’re fond of spy skullduggery, plot twists ala Ludlum (where it’s never a good idea to trust anybody) and shady characters that just won’t stay dead, click on some of these informative links and let your head start spinning. Caution: Be careful not to let your spinning head explode. This has been known to occur…

[UPDATE] Investigative reporter Dave Lindorff’s take on this story echoes my concerns related to those very strangely “missing” nukes from late August that were flown from Minot to Barksdale, a forward deployment station for Iraq/Afghanistan. Check out his post A Real 9/11 Cover-Up? Sibel Edmonds, Turkey and The Bomb.

Links:

For Sale: West’s deadly nuclear secrets

The Bomb in the Shadows: Proliferation, Corruption and the Way of the World

The Atlantic: The Wrath of Khan

No Quarter: Check Out Sibel Edmonds

Those Very Strangely “Missing” Nukes

This Years’ Osama bin Laden

When it was announced last week that bin Laden had sent another of his annual video greeting cards to America, I didn’t even bother to view any out-takes or try to guess if this year’s bin Laden is the real McCoy or just another bad actor too fat or too black to pull it off. I figure if George Bush isn’t concerned enough about him to care, why should I?

Again counter-terrorism expert Larry Johnson agrees with my take, though he beat me to the analysis this time. On his blog he calls it The Bin Laden Video Nonsense and complains about this bin Laden’s dyed beard – Grecian Formula for facial hair.

Some Other Years’ Osama bin Laden

Though to be honest, I’m not convinced there actually is such a person as Osama bin Laden. Oh, there might once have been one. A disgruntled fundamentalist from a too-rich Saudi family who had enough contacts in Islamic terrorist circles to make him useful to our interests in Afghanistan back when the world’s poorest nation and primary opium supplier was the Soviets’ problem.

Why bin Laden hates the U.S. has been analyzed to death in the last six years, so I won’t repeat it. I don’t think it matters because I think he died years ago. His money may still be buying guns and IEDs and recruiting gun-ho suicidal maniacs to the cause, so in a way he does live on in the offspring of his ideas and ideals.

Osama bin Laden entered my consciousness from the overwhelmed CNN message board launched within minutes of the coordinated al Quaeda attacks on the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998. Having kin in the foreign service who had only the month before left an embassy in Africa for new assignment, the bombings came way too close to home. Went to CNN’s board because information was coming in fast and furious from the scenes – much faster than news reports or articles could be written and aired.

At any rate, after just a few hours of watching the action, I came away from the analysis with the impression that this Saudi mercenary and Mujahadeen legend was the spiritual inspiration and endowment angel of al Quaeda. As opposed to being a physical presence within it and personally guiding all its operations.

Which explains a lot, both about the propaganda machine the current Bush administration built up around bin Laden (including the annual video greeting cards that always seem to star someone who doesn’t look much like bin Laden), and the complete lack of actual concern in that administration about bin Laden or where he might be hiding. If the man’s dead, why waste the effort to ‘find’ him?

Bin Laden was once a useful hired gun for the U.S. to use against the Soviets and has proved a quarter of a century later to be an even more useful bogey-man to use against America. His visage feeds the fearful hype Bush-Cheney manipulated so masterfully to get us into the current (and never-ending) Oil Wars, and to keep the citizenry scared enough to tolerate the gutting of our Constitution and reorganization of the government toward a police state in the wake of 9-11.

So despite sad remembrances on the 6th anniversary of the attacks, the cartoon bin Laden video greeting card didn’t interest me, scare me or anger me. It’s just more hype. One of these days perhaps a majority of Americans will stop being afraid of a dead man and ask the cyborg who was actually running the show from a bunker in an ‘undisclosed location’ why he allowed the entire bin Laden family to fly back to Arabia without questioning following 9-11.

Or why we didn’t just separate Osama’s portion of the family fortune from the al Quaeda death machine right then and there. As ‘Deep Throat’ told Bob Woodward in the basement of a parking garage outside D.C. about the skullduggery of a previous war-mongering administration, “Follow the Money.”

None of us were flying in those fearful days. Remember how strange the sky looked without contrails? So blue, and so quiet. We were still mourning nearly 3,000 deaths in the most horrendous attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor. Now the U.S. death toll in Iraq – which had nothing to do with 9-11 – is approaching 4,000. Estimates for Iraqi civilians dead due to our invasion and occupation hit more than 100,000 last year (not that we’re actually counting).

Death and destruction breeds death and destruction. We all know this, yet we play that game anyway. On Monday General Patreus testified to Congress about how he needs another 6 months to gage whether the surge is working in Iraq. While more U.S. soldiers continue to pay the ultimate price, and many more are maimed for life.

Maybe it’s time to start the lottery on who gets to be the last brave American soldier to die for George Bush’s mistake, and when. Or we could just have a Photoshop contest for the star of the next Osama bin Laden video greeting card. I don’t know about any of you, but I know I could probably ’shop up a Max Headroom CG version that would be more believable than the last few that have been used as a poor excuse for American politicians to sacrifice more of our rights on the altar of Forever-War.

Unhappy Anniversary, America.