Justice Refuses To Provide Legal Rationale for Warrantless Spying To Senate

The Justice Department is refusing to provide classified documents drawn up by their crackerjack legal minds justifying the extra-legal NSA warrantless eavesdropping program, reports the New York Times.

The Senate begins hearings on Feb 6 over the spying program. The first (and perhaps only) witness will be Attorney General Alberto (Abu) Gonzales.

The Senate should subpoena the documents from Justice. At least then Justice will have to call attention to it's intransigence.

The legality of the program is known to have produced serious concerns within the Justice Department in 2004, at a time when one of the legal opinions was drafted. Democrats say they want to review the internal opinions to assess how legal thinking on the program evolved and whether lawyers in the department saw any concrete limits to the president's powers in fighting terrorism...

Several Democrats and at least one Republican have pressed the Justice Department in recent days to give them access, even in a closed setting, to the internal documents that formed the legal foundation of the surveillance program. But when asked whether the classified legal opinions would be made available to Congress, a senior Justice Department official said Wednesday, "I don't think they're coming out."

They are clearly hiding the internal debate within Justice that must have had some career lawyers stating the obvious--that the program is illegal.

While the administration has laid out its legal defense repeatedly in the last two weeks, the formal legal opinions developed at the Justice Department to justify the program remain classified. The administration has refused even to publicly acknowledge the existence of the memorandums, but The New York Times has reported that two sets of legal opinions by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel asserted the president's broad power to order wiretaps without warrants in protecting national security...

Members of the Judiciary Committee have sought access to the memorandums, officials said. Some Democrats speculate that the classified memos may contain far-reaching and potentially explosive legal theories similar to those advocated by Mr. Yoo and others, and later disavowed by the Justice Department, regarding policies on torture.

Any other defendant who hires a crackpot lawyer gets what he pays for in court. Why not the administration?

But Senator Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat who also serves on the Judiciary Committee, said the panel should consider issuing subpoenas if the administration is not more forthcoming in providing documents and witnesses.

"Without the Justice Department memos and without more witnesses, it's hard to see how anything other than a rehashing of the administration line is going to happen," Mr. Schumer said Wednesday. "I am worried that these hearings could end up telling us very little when the American people are thirsty to find out what happened here."

The "rehashing of the administration line" is all they can do. Bush must convince the sheeple that he is "protecting" them with his assumption of dictatorial powers.

Then the brainwashed masses (if they technically possess brains) must go to work on their elected officials to detour any official accountability for the gross transgressions conducted by the administration.

The plan has a good chance to work.

Unless government employees with inside knowledge of the crimes listen to their consciences and provide incriminating evidence to lawmakers and the press. Like the people who leaked the program to the N.Y. Times in the first place.

Some of these people may already be spilling their guts to congressional investigators as we speak.