Five Years After 'Mission Accomplished'

"'It is my opinion, it is the policy of the Iranian government, approved to highest level of that government, to facilitate the killing of Americans in Iraq,' Hayden said."

Ann Scott Tyson writes in The Washington Post: "The nation's top military officer warned yesterday that the transition to a new American president will mark a 'time of vulnerability' as the United States fights two wars, and he said military leaders are already actively preparing for the changing of the guard.

"The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Navy Adm. Michael G. Mullen, said the U.S. political transition will be 'extraordinarily challenging,' particularly as the military is engaged in Iraq and Afghanistan and faces interference in both countries from Iran.

"'Iran is not going away,' Mullen said. 'We need to be strong and really in the deterrent mode, to not be very predictable' regarding Iran, he said in a meeting with editors and reporters at The Washington Post."

I'm sorry: The goal of our Iran posture is to "not be very predictable"? Well, mission accomplished.

Bush's Secret Laws

Elana Schor writes for the Guardian: "A legal brief that exempted the US military from criminal laws following the 9/11 attacks was improperly kept classified for years, the former head of the US government agency in charge of document secrecy said today.

"The March 2003 brief, which allowed Pentagon interrogators to claim self-defence in sidestepping laws against torture, was made public earlier this month.

"J William Leonard, who directed George Bush's information security oversight office until last year, today told Congress that the document never should have been classified in the first place.

"'To learn that such a document was classified had the same effect on me as waking up one morning and learning that after all these years, there is a "secret" article to the constitution that the American people do not even know about,' Leonard said."

And then there's the matter of Bush's attitude toward executive orders.

Scott Shane and David Johnston write in the New York Times that at the same hearing, senior Justice Department official John P. Elwood "disclosed a previously unpublicized method to cloak government activities. Mr. Elwood acknowledged that the administration believed that the president could ignore or modify existing executive orders that he or other presidents have issued without disclosing the new interpretation.

"Mr. Elwood, citing a 1980s precedent, said there was nothing new or unusual about such a view.

"Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, challenged Mr. Elwood, saying the administration's legal stance would let it secretly operate programs that are at odds with public executive orders that to all appearance remain in force. . . .

"Mr. Whitehouse, who sits on the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, has said the administration's contention that it can selectively modify executive orders 'turns The Federal Register into a screen of falsehoods behind whose phony regulations lawless programs can operate in secret.'"

Whitehouse discussed this, among other concerns, in a Dec. 7 floor speech, in which he summarized Bush's position on executive orders as: "I don't have to follow my own rules, and I don't have to tell you when I'm breaking them."

Whitehouse offered this example of the stakes: "Bear in mind that the so-called Protect America Act that was stampeded through this great body in August provides no -- zero -- statutory protections for Americans traveling abroad from government wiretapping. . . .

"The only restriction is an executive order called 12333, which limits executive branch surveillance to Americans who the Attorney General determines to be agents of a foreign power. That's what the executive order says.

"But what does this administration say about executive orders? . . .

"'Whenever (the President) wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order,' he may do so because 'an executive order cannot limit a President.' And he doesn't have to change the executive order, or give notice that he's violating it, because by 'depart(ing) from the executive order,' the President 'has instead modified or waived it.'

"So unless Congress acts, here is what legally prevents this President from wiretapping Americans traveling abroad at will: nothing. Nothing."

Rafael Enrique Valero writes for Government Executive that Leonard, the former secrecy czar, suggested another possibility: That Bush "could change an order governing secrecy and do so in secret, all unbeknownst to Congress and the courts, as if Louis Carroll, George Orwell and Franz Kafka all conspired to come up with the ultimate recipe for unchecked executive power."

Statements prepared for the hearing are available here.

Carrie Johnson writes in The Washington Post about the one administration concession of the day: "The Justice Department yesterday agreed to grant lawmakers limited access to secret memos that authorized CIA interrogation strategies, an offer that Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) immediately criticized as 'certainly too late . . . and too little, as well.'

"Bowing to intense pressure from congressional Democrats, senior Justice officials said they soon will release unredacted versions of memos drafted by staff members in the department's Office of Legal Counsel. Several of the controversial memos have been repudiated while others remain under fire from critics who say they encourage torture and civil liberties abuses. . . .

"Feingold, who presided over a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday on excessive government secrecy, said that access to the memos would come with strings attached that would make it difficult for lawmakers to conduct a thorough review.

"Under the terms of the arrangement, for instance, the members would not be able to keep paper or electronic copies of the documents.

"'We have had the most god-awful fight getting these opinions,' added Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.). 'There's an absolute stone wall being thrown up around this stuff.'"

Torture Watch

Adam Goldman writes for the Associated Press: "The military continued to use abusive interrogation methods on detainees after a 2003 directive meant to end such practices, the American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday after reviewing newly released documents.

"The Department of Defense documents shed light on the use of psychologists in military interrogations and the failure of medical workers to report abuse of detainees, the ACLU said.

"'The documents reveal that psychologists and medical personnel played a key role in sustaining prisoner abuse -- a clear violation of their ethical and legal obligations,' ACLU attorney Amrit Singh said. . . .

"The report was largely disclosed in 2005, and a declassified version of the review was made public last year. Some of the documents were initially redacted because they were classified, Singh said. The government claimed that if the information were released it would cause serious damage to national security. The newly released documents are part of the Church Report not previously released.

"Singh called the government's argument bogus, saying it furthered a pattern 'of claiming national security as pretext for withholding information to cover up embarrassing information.'"

There's more on the ACLU Web site.

Yochi J. Dreazen writes in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required): "Lawmakers have delayed a top general's nomination for a key position assisting the Joint Chiefs of Staff because of questions about detainee abuse by forces under his command, according to the Pentagon and people familiar with the matter.

"The impasse involves Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, a fast-rising officer who oversaw the secretive Special Operations units, including the Army's storied Delta Force, responsible for hunting high-ranking Islamic militants in both Iraq and Afghanistan. . . .

"Investigators from the ACLU and human-rights organizations have long charged that elite forces received written directives from higher-ranking officers allowing them to use physical interrogation techniques that were off-limits to conventional forces."

FISA Watch

Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball write for Newsweek: "The Bush administration is refusing to disclose internal e-mails, letters and notes showing contacts with major telecommunications companies over how to persuade Congress to back a controversial surveillance bill, according to recently disclosed court documents.

"The existence of these documents surfaced only in recent days as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by a privacy group called the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The foundation . . . is seeking information about communications among administration officials, Congress and a battery of politically well-connected lawyers and lobbyists hired by such big telecom carriers as AT&T and Verizon. Court papers recently filed by government lawyers in the case confirm for the first time that since last fall unnamed representatives of the telecoms phoned and e-mailed administration officials to talk about ways to block more than 40 civil suits accusing the companies of privacy violations because of their participation in a secret post-9/11 surveillance program ordered by the White House."

Meanwhile, Matt Apuzzo writes for the Associated Press: "The nation's spy court approved a record number of requests to search or eavesdrop on suspected terrorists and spies last year, the Justice Department said Wednesday.

"The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved 2,370 warrants last year targeting people in the United States believed to be linked to international terror organizations.

"That figure represents a 9 percent increase over 2006. The number of warrants has more than doubled since the terrorist attacks of 2001. . . .

"The court denied three warrant applications in full and partially denied one, the Justice Department said. Eighty-six times judges sent requests back to the government for changes before approving them."

Another Perino Dodge

Blogger Steve Benen writes: "It's been nearly two weeks since the New York Times first reported on a Pentagon program in which retired military officers, who've since become lobbyists or consultants for military contractors, were recruited to become propaganda agents of the Bush administration. Throughout the war in Iraq, these retired officers -- or 'message multipliers,' as they were described by internal Defense Department documents -- took on roles as military analysts for all of the major news networks, without noting their puppet-like relationships with the Pentagon. . . .

"At yesterday's White House press briefing, Raw Story reporter Eric Brewer had raised his hand to ask a question for quite a while. Dana Perino ignored him until others intervened, urging Perino to call on him.

"Brewer, after noting that the retired officers' access was cut off if they departed from the Pentagon's talking points, asked, '[D]id the White House know about and approve of this operation?'"

Perino didn't answer directly. "I think that it's absolutely appropriate to provide information to people who are seeking it and are going to be providing their opinions on it," she said.

But Benen writes how disingenuous that response really was: "The press secretary's spin makes it sound quite innocuous. . . . In reality, however, this was as sophisticated a media-manipulation scheme as anything the Bush gang has hatched to date."

Cheney and the Whales

Juliet Eilperin writes in The Washington Post: "White House officials for more than a year have blocked a rule aimed at protecting endangered North Atlantic right whales by challenging the findings of government scientists, according to documents obtained by the Union of Concerned Scientists."

H. Josef Hebert writes for the Associated Press: "The revelations surrounding the right whale regulation come amid criticism from members of Congress and conservation groups of alleged White House interference in the work of government scientists involved in a wide range of areas from regulating toxic chemicals to climate change and protecting endangered species."

Cartoon Watch

Tom Toles on Bush's use of language; Glenn McCoy on Iran; Ann Telnaes on Bush's Jeremiah Wright; John Sherffius on what we need and what we get; Jim Morin on bubbles.