The big question about the dramatic incident Comey testified to the other day is this: if the NSA surveillance program had already been going on for two years, why was it suddenly an issue in March of 2004?
An e-mailer to TPM Muckraker provides a likely answer:
October 3, 2003...the Senate confirms Jack L. Goldsmith as the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel. In June, with Goldsmith’s nomination before the senate, John Yoo had left his job as the deputy at OLC....The White House (i.e., Dick Cheney and David Addington) did everything they could to shield their dirty little program from scrutiny, not just from Congress but from their own Department of Justice. That fact, and the fact that once it did come under review nobody with a modicum of integrity was willing to approve it, tells us just how dirty it was.
Fast forward to December 11, 2003, when Comey is confirmed as Deputy Attorney General. He immediately assumes a more aggessive posture than his predecessor, Larry Thompson....
Thompson had not been authorized access to the details of the NSA program. But, reports the NYTimes, “Comey was eventually authorized to take part in the program and to review intelligence material that grew out of it” (1/1/06). He set Goldsmith to the task of sorting through the program’s dubious legality....
Suddenly, the March 11 date comes into clearer focus. For the first time, trained and qualified attorneys within the Justice Department had conducted a careful review of the program. Comey took the evidence he had gathered to Ashcroft....By the end of that meeting, Ashcroft and Comey had “agreed on a course of action,” to wit, that they “would not certify the program as to its legality.”
....For two and a half years, Ashcroft signed off on the program every forty-five days without any real knowledge of what it entailed. In his defense, the advisors who were supposed to review such things on his behalf were denied access; to his everlasting shame, he did not press hard enough to have that corrected.
When Comey came on board, he insisted on being granted access, and had Goldsmith review the program. What they found was so repugnant to any notion of constitutional liberties that even Ashcroft, once briefed, was willing to resign rather than sign off again.
Comey's testimony ended with both Specter and Leahy discussing a closed-door hearing with Comey on the specifics of the program. Finally, five years after the NSA program began, three years after Comey was willing to give up his job to stop it, we may finally get some answers on what exactly they were up to.
|