There Is Always Something Worse

17Comments

1. 1.

   Quiddity

   July 10, 2009 at 3:43 pm

   What did they call it? I don’t see the answer at the link.

2. 2.

   Sarcastro

   July 10, 2009 at 3:46 pm

   Quiddity, It’s the Ackerman link from the TPM link.

   “President’s Surveillance Program”

3. 3.

   Violet

   July 10, 2009 at 3:56 pm

   The “President’s Surveillance Program”? Holy cow. Do you think W. randomly picked some number or person and listened in here or there? Creepy. Even worse, we all know Cheney was really President.

   Shudder.

4. 4.

   xj-not the car

   July 10, 2009 at 3:56 pm

   straight from Doug and Dimsdale Pirahna’s story- “the other operation” (monty python) – also a criminal enterprise…

5. 5.

   geg6

   July 10, 2009 at 3:59 pm

   From the IG’s report re: “The President’s Surveillance Program”:

   The specific intelligence activities that were permitted by the Presidential Authorizations remain highly classified, except that beginning in December 2005 the President and other Administration officials acknowledged that these activities included the interception without a court order of certain international communications where there is “a reasonable basis to conclude that one party to the communication is a member of al-Qai’da, affiliated with al-Qai’da, or a member of an organization affiliated with al-Qai’da.” The President and other Administration officials referred to this publicly disclosed activity as the “Terrorist Surveillance Program,” a convention we follow in this unclassified report. We refer to other intelligence activities under the Presidential Authorizations as the “Other Intelligence Activities.” The specific details of the Other Intelligence Activities remain highly classified, although the Attorney General publicly acknowledged the existence of such activities in August 2007. Together, the Terrorist Surveillance Program and the Other Intelligence Activities comprise the PSP.

   There has been some very quiet whispering that some of these “Other Intelligence Activities” include the assassination squads that Sy Hersh has talked about and everyone in the MSM ignored because, well, Sy Hersh, he’s just a hysterical conspiracy monger.

6. 6.

   NonyNony

   July 10, 2009 at 4:02 pm

   @Violet:

   The “President’s Surveillance Program”? Holy cow. Do you think W. randomly picked some number or person and listened in here or there?

   Nonononono. W didn’t call this the “President’s Surveillance Program”, nor did anyone within his administration. That’s the name that the Inspectors General who wrote the report used to call the whole program. The whole program was the (somewhat) publicly disclosed “Terrorist Surveillance Program” (where anyone who was even suspected of having a connection to al-Qaeda was able to be wiretapped without a warrant) and the not-disclosed-until-this-report activity that the IGs called “Other Intelligence Activities”. Those two things together the IGs call the “President’s Surveillance Program” in this report.

   I’m dying to find out what was involved in the “Other Intelligence Activities” portion and just how illegal they got. Sadly we’ll probably get that section declassified around the same time all of the government documents about the Kennedy assassination become declassified.

7. 7.

   r€nato

   July 10, 2009 at 4:24 pm

   Once again the Dirty Fucking Hippies were right.

   Some of these DFHs – who are obviously not Serious People by virtue of having been proved fucking right over and over again – have also alleged that the Bush/Cheney 2004 campaign used some of these domestic surveillance programs to gather political intelligence, including on the Kerry 2004 campaign… anyone wanna take bets on how long until we are proved fucking right yet again about that suspicion?

8. 8.

   The Saff

   July 10, 2009 at 4:24 pm

   And, most likely, nobody’s going to do any time for any of this surveilling. What I wouldn’t give to see any number of former Bush officials in the perp walk. Everytime I see Karl Rove on my teevee, I yell, “why aren’t you in prison?”

9. 9.

   El Bandito Blancito

   July 10, 2009 at 4:45 pm

   Ahhh, the 4th always was my favorite amendment. I’ll sure miss that little bugger.

10. 10.

    srv

    July 10, 2009 at 4:55 pm

    @r€nato: Imagine the technology, and imagine the responsibility over that technology being outsourced.

11. 11.

    neff

    July 10, 2009 at 5:05 pm

    Yes, it’s nice to have this additional info out there for Obama to do nothing about.

12. 12.

    Snarki, child of Loki

    July 10, 2009 at 5:07 pm

    Oh, the IG probably got confused by the bushies.

    “Terrorist Surveillance Program,” spying on damn-near anyone that’s within 5 degrees of Kevin Bacon/Osama.

    “President Surveillance Program” spying on possible presidential candidates.

13. 13.

    Bad Horse's Filly

    July 10, 2009 at 5:10 pm

    @geg6: I don’t know if you saw it in last night’s open thread, but I was in awe of your Henry and would love to see a picture. Has he appeared on BJ yet?

14. 14.

    Zifnab25

    July 10, 2009 at 5:16 pm

    But now that Obama is President, I’m sure we have nothing to worry about. After all, it’s not like power corrupts… What could absolute power like this do?

15. 15.

    wilfred

    July 10, 2009 at 5:33 pm

    I wonder what they called this:

    WASHINGTON — After a mass killing of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Taliban prisoners of war by the forces of an American-backed warlord during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, Bush administration officials repeatedly discouraged efforts to investigate the episode, according to government officials and human rights organizations.

    We will never regain what we have lost in the eyes of the rest of the world, even if we might not have deserved the good name in the first place But at the risk of sounding naive we do owe something to our own posterity.

    We can start by actually investigating someting, anything, of the crimes committed by the shit-eating pig Bush and his gangster pals.

16. 16.

    burnspbesq

    July 10, 2009 at 7:55 pm

    @Wilfred:

    They called it “stuff.” As in “stuff happens.” And then they shrugged their shoulders.

    I have called you out on a number of occasions when I thought you were wrong about things, but on the need for real criminal investigations of the conduct of the last administration, I am in complete agreement.

17. 17.

    dopeyo

    July 11, 2009 at 11:49 am

    other activities = TIA
    TIA = Total Information Awareness
    ….ooops, that was cancelled…
    TIA = Terrorist Information Archive
    (i.e. we wiretap you to make sure you aren’t a terrorist. then we archive that, and take a second look, and a third, and another.