Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales suggested on Thursday for the first time that the president might have the legal authority to order wiretapping without a warrant on communications between Americans that occur exclusively within the United States.

"I'm not going to rule it out," Mr. Gonzales said.

Gonzales Suggests Legal Basis for Domestic Eavesdropping - New York Times

Within hours after Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's announced retirement from the Supreme Court, members of conservative groups around the country convened in five national conference calls in which, participants said, they shared one big concern: heading off any effort by President Bush to nominate his attorney general, Alberto R. Gonzales to replace her.

Conservative Groups Rally Against Gonzales as Justice

Decius, thanks for finding this.

Anyone else that's closely following the debate about Alberto Gonzales' appointment as Attorney General, where this early 2002 memo is being cited as something that raises questions about him, I encourage you to read the memo for yourself.

I'd been especially interested in reports that Gonzales had referred to the Geneva PoW protocols as "quaint" and "obsolete". Having read the memo itself now, I think that the context in which those words were used made sense:

"...As you [President Bush] have said, the war against terrorism is a new kind of war. It is not the traditional clash between nations adhering to the laws of war that formed the backdrop for [the Geneva protocols]. The nature of the new war places a high premium on other factors, such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians, and the need to try terrorists for war crimes such as wantonly killing civilians. In my [Gonzales'] judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions requiring that captured enemy be afforded such things as commissary privileges, scrip (i.e., advances of monthly pay), athletic uniforms, and scientific instruments."

I'm continuing to read about Gonzales and haven't made up my own mind about him yet, but so far he seems to be a relatively moderate choice, with critics and supporters on both sides of the political spectrum. Granted, this memo shows that he disagreed with Colin Powell's office on a particular matter, but the memo also does a pretty good job of laying out both the pro's and con's of a potential decision, along with a reasonably well thought through recommendation on which course of action to take.

Gonzales Memo

bucy wrote:
] ] WASHINGTON - With a hug and words of high praise,
] ] President Bush (news - web sites) named Alberto Gonzales
] ] as attorney general on Wednesday, elevating the
] ] administration's most prominent Hispanic to a highly
] ] visible post in the war on terror.
]
] He isn't great but better than Ashcroft, probably.

The problem with Ashcroft was his abuse of the Patriot act for investigations unrelated to Terrorism. I have serious doubts that the guy who created the administration's weasly policies on enemy combatants and torture, and who ended 50 years of American Bar Association vetting of federal judges because the radical wing of the Republican party doesn't like the constitution, is going to be a super great AG. The only blessing here is that they didn't put him on the Supreme Court bench.

See the story I'm linking:

RE: Bush Picks Gonzales to Succeed Ashcroft

] WASHINGTON - With a hug and words of high praise,
] President Bush (news - web sites) named Alberto Gonzales
] as attorney general on Wednesday, elevating the
] administration's most prominent Hispanic to a highly
] visible post in the war on terror.

He isn't great but better than Ashcroft, probably.

Bush Picks Gonzales to Succeed Ashcroft

The February 23 letter stated, "The department is not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint Mr. Griffin," and that the Justice Department was "not aware of anyone lobbying, either inside or outside of the administration, for Mr. Griffin's appointment."

Federal investigators have obtained documents showing that Kyle Sampson, then-chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, and Chris Oprison, then an associate White House counsel, drafted and approved the letter even though they had first-hand knowledge that the assertions were not true. The Justice Department later had to repudiate the Sampson-Oprison letter and sent a new one informing Congress that it could no longer stand by the earlier assertions.

That would either be perjury or lying to Congress.

And hiring Murray Waas is a coup for Huffpo. He's about as well connected and informed as anyone in DC, he's heading for Sy Hersh/Woodstein levels.

U.S. Attorney Scandal Probe Enters White House Circle

Senior aides to former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales broke the law by using politics to guide their hiring decisions for a wide range of important department positions, slowing the hiring process at critical times and damaging the department’s credibility and independence, an internal report concluded Monday.

Go to jail. Go directly to jail. To not pass the bar. Do not collect legal fees.

Justice Dept. Report on Hiring Finds Violations - NYTimes.com

I was too busy early this week to pay attention to the disclosure of the John Yoo memos. Most of the drama seems to be circling around this peculiar footnote, which makes reference to another memo that remains classified:

10: Indeed, drawing in part on the reasoning of Verdugo-Urquidez, as well as the Supreme Court's treatment of the destruction of property for the purposes of military necessity, our Office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations. See Memorandum for Alberto R. Gonzales, Counsel to the President, and William J. Haynes, n, General Counsel, Department of Defense, from John C. Yoo, Deputy Assistant Attorney General and Robert J. Delahunty, Special Counsel, Re: Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States at 25 (Oct 23, 200 I).

There is a bunch of discussion at the link about this footnote. It raises disturbing questions. What is a domestic military operation? If the President wants to avoid obtaining a warrant need he merely send the army instead of the police? Is domestic NSA spying a military operation, removing not only the 4th amendments warrant requirement, but its reasonableness requirement as well? More here. I would add, are there acts not regulated by FISA which would not meet the "reasonableness" requirement of the 4th amendment which this administration engaged in under this memo's advice?

Also interesting is the following footnote:

11: Our analysis here should not be confused with a theory that the Constitution somehow does not "apply" during wartime: The Supreme Court squarely rejected such a proposition long ago in Ex parte Milligan, 71 U.S. (4 Wall.) 2, 119-20 (1866), and at least that part of the Milligan decision is still good law. See, e.g., Kennedy v. MendozaMartinez, 372 U.S. 144, 164-65 (1963); United States v. L. Cohen Grocery Co., 255 U.S. 81, 88 (1921) ("[T]he mere existence of a state of war could not suspend or change the operation upon the power of Congress of the guaranties and limitations of the Fifth and Sixth Amendments ...."). Instead, we conclude that the restrictions outlined in the Fifth Amendment simply do not address actions the Executive takes in conducting a military campaign against the Nation's enemies.

Get it? The Constitution "applies" during wartime, but only to the acts of Congress, not the actions of the Executive.

Yoo's Footnote 10 and Footnote 11

Apparently that meant repeating the falsehood with added detail: the "fact" that I had been on a conference call the previous day with the Hillary high command. Again, false. My worry is that if this is what one of Fox's best and most respected reporters is doing, what are the hacks up to?

Way to go FOX News! Keep hitting that story and maybe it'll be true! Sort of like the surge is working (if at best a 50/50 shot is working) or Alberto Gonzales is great (at what? Canasta?).

(Sorry about actually linking to those idiots with the Gonzo bit, but lets get real, when Arlen Spector [R-PA] said Gonzo was "no doubt, bad for the Justice Department." ON FOX, that pretty much cashed the deal in.)

Paul Begala: Fox News: We Report -- Even if We Know It's False - Media on The Huffington Post

It was a year of soul searching at THREAT LEVEL, every day a fresh challenge to our fundamental beliefs and convictions: Alberto Gonzales made us pine for John Ashcroft; Google made us love roving surveillance cams; and Jammie Thomas' internet spoofing defense was enough to make us secretly root for the RIAA.

If you missed any of it, not to fear: here's the year-end wrap up that will push your personal threat level to code orange.

One of the things singled out in Threat Level's Year in Review was, as expected, Virgil and his WikiScanner.

Readers also carried the water when graduate student Virgil Griffith released WikiScanner, a web tool that mashes up whois IP records with Wikipedia logs to unmask corporations and government agencies making anonymous changes to Wikipedia. Readers found hundreds of self-serving edits and revisionist cuts by the likes of Diebold, Dow Chemical and ExxonMobil -- the latter tweaked the entry on the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill to whitewash the effect on Alaskan wildlife.

For many of us, this will also be remembered as the year Virgil set the bar really fucking high for cool. Billy wrote a book which has been released to wide critical acclaim, but Virgil was on the Colbert Report. Elonka hasn't been on the Colbert Report. Mike's shenanigans didn't make the Daily Show.

It's going to be hard to top. I think the smart money is on Cyan..

THREAT LEVEL's Year in Review -- 2007 | Virgil is still cooler than any of us...