Security Issue Kills Domestic Spying Probe

The Associated Press

Thursday 11 May 2006

Washington - The government has abruptly ended an inquiry into
the warrantless eavesdropping program because the National Security
Agency refused to grant Justice Department lawyers the necessary
security clearance to probe the matter.

The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility,
or OPR, sent a fax to Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y., on Wednesday
saying they were closing their inquiry because without clearance
their lawyers cannot examine Justice lawyers' role in the program.

"We have been unable to make any meaningful progress in our
investigation because OPR has been denied security clearances for
access to information about the NSA program," OPR counsel H.
Marshall Jarrett wrote to Hinchey. Hinchey's office shared the
letter with The Associated Press.

Jarrett wrote that beginning in January, his office has made a
series of requests for the necessary clearances. Those requests were
denied Tuesday.

"Without these clearances, we cannot investigate this matter and
therefore have closed our investigation," wrote Jarrett.

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the terrorist
surveillance program "has been subject to extensive oversight both
in the executive branch and in Congress from the time of its
inception."

Roehrkasse noted the OPR's mission is not to investigate
possible wrongdoing in other agencies, but to determine if Justice
Department lawyers violated any ethical rules. He declined to
comment when asked if the end of the inquiry meant the agency
believed its lawyers had handled the wiretapping matter ethically.

Hinchey is one of many House Democrats who have been highly
critical of the domestic eavesdropping program first revealed in
December. He said lawmakers would push to find out who at the NSA
denied the Justice Department lawyers security clearance.

"This administration thinks they can just violate any law they
want, and they've created a culture of fear to try to get away with
that. It's up to us to stand up to them," said Hinchey.

In February, the OPR announced it would examine the conduct of
its own agency's lawyers in the program, though they were not
authorized to investigate NSA activities.

Bush's decision to authorize the largest U.S. spy agency to
monitor people inside the United States, without warrants, generated
a host of questions about the program's legal justification.

The administration has vehemently defended the eavesdropping,
saying the NSA's activities were narrowly targeted to intercept
international calls and e-mails of Americans and others inside the
U.S. with suspected ties to the al-Qaida terror network.

Separately, the Justice Department sought last month to dismiss
a federal lawsuit accusing the telephone company AT&T of colluding
with the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program.

The lawsuit, brought by an Internet privacy group, does not name
the government as a defendant, but the Department of Justice has
sought to quash the lawsuit, saying it threatens to expose
government and military secrets.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/051106Z.shtml


Project Icon

Department has decided that it will coordinate its human
intelligence missions with the CIA but will not, as in the past,
await consent. It also reserves the right to bypass the agency's
Langley headquarters, consulting CIA officers in the field instead.

Comment: This is what happened in Iran/Contra where the CIA Chief
of Station ran the Contra operation after Congress prohibited
funding of the Contras. The Olie North and boys ran the operation
out of the White House.

Known by several names since its inception as Project Icon on April
25, 2002, the Strategic Support Branch is an arm of the DIA's nine-
year-old Defense Human Intelligence Service.

Pentagon officials said they established the Strategic Support
Branch using "reprogrammed" funds, without explicit congressional
authority or appropriation. Defense intelligence missions, they
said, are subject to less stringent congressional oversight than
comparable operations by the CIA.

Strategic Support Branch deploys small teams of case officers,
linguists, interrogators and technical specialists alongside newly
empowered special operations forces. A recent Pentagon memo states
that recruited agents may include "notorious figures" whose links to
the U.S. government would be embarrassing if disclosed. activities
that have traditionally been the province of the CIA's Directorate
of Operations.

Comment: "Notorious figures" translated drug traffickers and death
squads.

Rumsfeld's ambitious plans rely principally on the Tampa-based U.S.
Special Operations Command, or SOCOM, and on its clandestine
component, the Joint Special Operations Command. Rumsfeld has
designated SOCOM's leader, Army Gen. Bryan D. Brown, as the military
commander in chief in the war on terrorism.

Gellman reported that the unit had been created "without explicit
congressional authority or appropriation."

Gellman reported: "Under Title 10, for example, the Defense
Department must report to Congress all 'deployment orders,' or
formal instructions from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to position U.S.
forces for combat. But guidelines issued this month by
Undersecretary for Intelligence Stephen A. Cambone state that
special operations forces may 'conduct clandestine HUMINT
operations . . . before publication' of a deployment order,
rendering notification unnecessary. Pentagon lawyers also define
the 'war on terror' as ongoing, indefinite and global in scope.
That analysis effectively discards the limitation of the defense
secretary's war powers to times and places of imminent combat."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29414-2005Jan22.html



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