Abu Gonzales : Liar, Liar pants on FIre!

Today's Glenn Greenwald where he goes over the blatant an obvious lying by our esteemed Attorney General is truly excellent. During his testimony for the Senate a few weeks ago Abu Gonzales claimed in response to several questions that there is no spoon warrantless (entirely) domestic surveillance program.

... warrantless eavesdropping is plainly occurring beyond the "Terrorist Surveillance Program," which means that there is eavesdropping on domestic calls and/or calls not involving Al Qeada (since international calls involving Al Qaeda are, by definition, part of that Program). That means that the assurances repeatedly given by the President and his officials are just false.

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(2) Several weeks ago, I noted that Gonazles -- in response to questions from several Senators about whether the Administration has the power to engage in warrantless eavesdropping on purely domestic communications -- testified that the Department of Justice had never conducted a legal analysis of the legality of warrantless eavesdropping on strictly domestic communications. He made that claim several times:

"That analysis, quite frankly, has not been conducted."

"I have said I do not believe we have done the analysis on that."

"The legal analysis as to whether or not that kind of [domestic] surveillance – we haven’t done that kind of analysis . . "

However in a letter (PDF) that he sent to the Senate to "clarify" his testimony, Gonzales has just done a total about face on the issue of "whether an analysis had been done".

In his letter yesterday, Gonzales backed away – completely – from what was his unambiguous (and now clearly false) claim that the DoJ had never analyzed the legality of warrantless eavesdropping for domestic communications. Clearly, the DoJ has analyzed the legality of warrantless domestic surveillance:

Since I was testifying only as to the legal basis of the activity confirmed by the President, I was referring only to the legal analysis of the Department set out in the January 19th paper, which addressed that activity and therefore, of course, does not address the interception of purely domestic communications. However, I did not mean to suggest that no analysis beyond the January 19th paper had ever been conducted by the Department.

I say this advisedly: the Administration is now in full-blown shameless lying mode. Gonzales repeatedly told the Committee that the DoJ had not analyzed the legality of domestic surveillance -- because he wanted to leave the impression that there is no domestic surveillance. In fact, the DoJ clearly has engaged in exactly the analysis Gonzales categorically denied.

This is patently ridiculous people. This is a farce. It's pay no attention to the fracking idiot behind the curtain time. Glenn adeptly points out that this is a total replay of the President's claims that all wiretaping "requires a warrant" - except obviously for when the President decides it doesn't.

Oh and by the way, we now exactly what at least part of that warrantless domestic spying program - which the Administration had previously claimed was shutdown is called Total Information Awareness.

Just for those who are unfamiliar with the project:

The Information Awareness Office was a project of the United States Department of Defense's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency focused on developing mass surveillance and related technologies to counter transnational threats to national security. The IAO mission was to "imagine, develop, apply, integrate, demonstrate and transition information technologies, components and prototype, closed-loop, information systems that will counter asymmetric threats by achieving total information awareness". The IAO was defunded by Congress in 2003.

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The IAO has the stated mission to gather as much information as possible about everyone, in a centralized location, for easy perusal by the United States government, including (though not limited to) Internet activity, credit card purchase histories, airline ticket purchases, car rentals, medical records, educational transcripts, driver's licenses, utility bills, tax returns, and any other available data. In essence, the IAO’s goal is to develop the capacity to recreate a life history of thoughts and movements for any individual on the planet on demand, which some deem necessary to counter the threat of terrorism. Critics claim the very existence of the IAO completely disregards the concept of individual privacy and liberties. They see the organization as far too invasive and prone to abuse.

Prone to abuse? Ya think?

Although Wikipedia points out that this program was supposedly defended in 2003, the National Journal reports that the work on this project still goes on.

Research under the Defense Department's Total Information Awareness program -- which developed technologies to predict terrorist attacks by mining government databases and the personal records of people in the United States -- was moved from the Pentagon's research-and-development agency to another group, which builds technologies primarily for the National Security Agency, according to documents obtained by National Journal and to intelligence sources familiar with the move. The names of key projects were changed, apparently to conceal their identities, but their funding remained intact, often under the same contracts.

At this point we turn back to Abu Gonzales and look anew at why he wasn't put under oath when he testified before the Senate. And why after he gave 8-hours of thorough testimony political spin-meistering he found it neccesary to take yet another bite from that rancid apple and "clarify" himself.

Just keep repeating to yourself kids, "Beside the NSA "Terrorist Surveillance Program" - there are no warrantless domestic spying programs - except for all the other programs that Gonzales forgot to mention."

Vyan