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Welcome to the Monkey House. I will be your tour guide for the duration of this particular shocker. The ACLU issued the following presser this evening (a stiff drink will be needed before you delve into this):
Bush Administration Memo Says Fourth Amendment Does Not Apply To Military Operations Within U.S.
ACLU Calls For Immediate Release Of Withheld Legal Memo
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: James Freedland, (212) 519-7829 or (646) 785-1894; media@aclu.org
NEW YORK - A newly disclosed
secret memo authored by the Department of Justice's Office of Legal
Counsel (OLC) in March 2003 that asserts President Bush has unlimited
power to order brutal interrogations of detainees also reveals a
radical interpretation of the Constitution's Fourth Amendment
protection from unreasonable search and seizure. The memo, declassified
yesterday as the result of an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit,
cites a still-secret DOJ memo from 2001 that found that the "Fourth
Amendment had no application to domestic military operations."
The
October 2001 memo was almost certainly meant to provide a legal basis
for the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program,
which President Bush launched the same month the memo was issued. As a
component of the Department of Defense, the NSA is a military agency.
"The recent disclosures
underscore the Bush administration's extraordinarily sweeping
conception of executive power," said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the
ACLU's National Security Project. "The administration's lawyers believe
the president should be permitted to violate statutory law, to violate
international treaties, and even to violate the Fourth Amendment inside
the U.S. They believe that the president should be above the law."
The Bush administration has
never argued publicly that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to
military operations within the nation's borders. The memo released
yesterday publicizes this argument for the first time.
The ACLU has been aware of the
Justice Department's October 2001 memo since last year, but until now,
its contents were unknown. The Justice Department informed the ACLU of
the memo's existence as a result of a FOIA lawsuit seeking information
concerning the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program. The Justice
Department acknowledged the existence of "a 37-page memorandum, dated
October 23, 2001, from a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in OLC, and
a Special Counsel, OLC, to the Counsel to the President, prepared in
response to a request from the White House for OLC's views concerning
the legality of potential responses to terrorist activity." Until now,
however, almost nothing was known about the memo's contents - except
that it was related to a request for information about the NSA's
warrantless wiretapping program. The ACLU has challenged the
withholding of the October 2001 memo and the issue is pending before
the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The memo released to the ACLU
yesterday cites the October 2001 memo but takes its argument even
further. Relying on the earlier memo, the March 2003 memo argues that
the president has authority as Commander-in-Chief to bypass not only
the Fourth Amendment but the central due process guarantee of the Fifth
Amendment as well.
"This memo makes a mockery of
the Constitution and the rule of law," said Amrit Singh, a staff
attorney with the ACLU. "That it was issued by the Justice Department,
whose job it is to uphold the law, makes it even more unconscionable."
The March 2003 memo was
declassified in response to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU, the New York
Civil Liberties Union, and other organizations in June 2004 to enforce
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for records concerning the
treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody abroad. The ACLU has been
fighting for the release of the March 2003 Yoo memo since filing the
lawsuit. A few weeks ago, after the court ordered additional briefing
on whether the Defense Department could continue to withhold the memo,
the government reluctantly agreed to conduct a declassification review
by March 31. The Defense Department released this memo after conducting
the review.
The 2003 Department of Justice memo can be found online at: www.aclu.org/safefree/torture/34745res20030314.html
Documents relating to the ACLU's NSA FOIA lawsuit are available online at: www.aclu.org/safefree/nsaspying/30022res20060207.html
To date, more than 100,000
pages of government documents have been released in response to the
ACLU's FOIA lawsuit related the abuse of prisoner in U.S. custody
abroad. These documents are available online at: www.aclu.org/torturefoia"
If I am reading this correctly, it seems to me that this administration has justified its crimes by NOT suspending the state of emergency that went up on September 11, 2001. They are using emergency powers if you look at the whole of the spying, military actions inside the US, etc. I would wager that if asked, this administration will admit that we have been in a state of emergency for their tenure in office. Congress? Was the state of emergency lifted, yes or no?
Oh, just one more question: what are "military operations inside the U.S" actually and how often have these "operations" been carried out? Anyone? Bueller? Congress? Impeachment Table? Anyone?
Posted April 2, 2008 | 07:16 PM (EST)