Conservatives Endorse the Fuhrer Principle

Re: Conservatives Endorse the Fuhrer Principle

I doubt the veracity of your account. What are the exact quotations?

Re: Conservatives Endorse the Fuhrer Principle


I'm guessing it was:



LINK

Or maybe it was:

" Still, the old prosecutor managed to elicit a crucial concession from Dinh: that the administration's case for its program comes down to saying "Trust me."

"None of us can make a conclusive assessment as to the wisdom of that program and its legality," Dinh acknowledged, "without knowing the full operational details. I do trust the president when he asserts that he has reviewed it carefully and therefore is convinced that there is full legal authority."

(Tico's link)

When the Bush administration proves trustworthy, the majority of the country, which thinks he isn't, may trust him.

I doubt it.

None of which amounts to endorsing violations of legal rights.

Can Cheney be His Own Declassification Machine?

by Steve Clemons

In my view, the law says "No". . .but I have little doubt Alberto Gonzales and his minions will construct a rationale that says otherwise.

But I have run across some interesting information -- and have some questions that we should all pose to those at the helm in the White House.

Executive Order 12958
on "Classified National Security Information" was promulgated by President Clinton on April 17, 1995.

This Executive Order "prescribes a uniform system for classifying, safeguarding, and declassifying national security information."

In this 1995 Executive Order, the VICE PRESIDENT is mentioned only one time -- and only in such a way that the automatic, 25-year declassification of historically important documents can be preempted if declassification would "impair the ability of responsible United States Government officials to protect the President, the Vice President, and other individuals."

Now, let's move to the March 25, 2003 Executive Order by President Bush, No. 13292, that amends President Clinton's Executive Order on National Security Information.

The Vice President's "presence" in the Executive Order increased by 1000%. Instead of just one mention in the Executive Order, Cheney's office is referred to eleven times.

This hyping of Cheney's and his staff's role in the management of secrets is a further testament to the historically unique power that Cheney's vice-presidency amassed in the period after 9/11/2001.

Briefly, in the amended Executive Order, Dick Cheney and presumably future VPs are affected by this National Security Information presidential order in the following ways:

1. The Vice President, in the context of his duties, has the authority to "classify" information;
2. The Vice President, in the context of his duties, can give a "top secret" classification to information;

3. The Vice President can give a "secret" or "confidential" classification to information;

4. Like in the previous 1995 Executive Order, the automatic, 25-year declassification of national security information can be preempted if it would impair the ability to "protect" the Vice President from physical harm;

5. Mandatory declassification review (by a designated process) is required of information originating from the Vice President;

6. Mandatory declassification review is required from the Vice President's staff;

7. Access to certain national security information can be provided to individuals who occupied policy-making positions appointed by the Vice President (or President of course)

8. Rules barring access to certain classified national security information will be waived for the Vice President;

9. Waivers to rules of access to classified national security information will only apply to Vice Presidential appointees in areas of their policy work while working as an Executive Branch appointee;

10. This mention of the VP only relates to the above line saying that access to classified national security information will only be provided to Presdidential and Vice Presidential appointees in the area of his or her policy work that was done during the tenure of that respective President or Vice President;

11. "'Original classification authority' means an individual authorized in writing, either by the President, the Vice President in the performance of executive duties. . ." This is a definitional item in the Executive Order.


There is NOTHING HERE that indicates that the Vice President has any embedded authority to be a declassification machine unto himself.

This matter is important because Vice Presdident Cheney slipped into his interview with Brit Hume yesterday his belief that he has the ability to declassify national security information -- and implying that there is an Executive Order that allows him to do it.

Here is the exchange:

Q Let me ask you another question. Is it your view that a Vice President has the authority to declassify information?
THE VICE PRESIDENT: There is an executive order to that effect.

Q There is.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Yes.

Q Have you done it?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I've certainly advocated declassification and participated in declassification decisions. The executive order --

Q You ever done it unilaterally?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: I don't want to get into that. There is an executive order that specifies who has classification authority, and obviously focuses first and foremost on the President, but also includes the Vice President.


Vice President Cheney is right that he has the ability to classify materials; that is clear from the Executive Order.

It is also clear, however, that the rules and processes for CLASSIFYING national security information are completely different than DECLASSIFYING information. That is evident from reading the structure of the Executive Order itself.

So, Cheney is engaged in Executive Branch over-reach again, implying he has a power that is not designated.

This is the issue that the nation should be focused on -- and in TWN's view, it is far more important than Cheney's hunting accident and even his obsession with making the White House opaque to this country's citizens.

If Cheney authorized Scooter Libby to leak classified national security secrets, then Cheney broke the law and should be investigated. GOP presidential hopeful George Allen agrees.

One lucid observer shared with me the thought this morning that there may, in fact, be "classified" aspects to the March 2003 Executive Order that we mere members of the public are not privy too.

But let's warn the White House now: Secret Orders that give the President or Vice President secret new powers are not consistent in any way with democracy and this nation's heritage.

TWN doubts that the authority to classify or declassify information would have been issued in a secret way -- as it is clear that one of the purposes of the 2003 Executive Order amendment was to give Vice President Cheney and his office much more presence in the management of secrets -- and the White House wanted to make VP Cheney's role overt, not hidden. http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001253.php

Blueflame,

Perhaps you could explain the relevance of the Cheney Declass article to your original post?

Brandon's already pointed out the most obvious misquote, but it doesn't stop there. In addition,

Again, I can find no support for this statement. Closest I can find is this quote from a Washington Post article "Why does the FISA law trump the constitution?" one woman demanded of him. "Why should a non-elected, non-briefed judge be able to veto our national security?"

The woman isn't even talking about Bush let alone that he is "above the law".

I suggest next time you spend a little time to really check out the articles from rabid anti-war or anti-Bush web sites or blogs. This one is so far from reality that I think Mr. Roberts must be a protege of Art Bell.

slkshock7, well to me the Cheney post on Declassification is one example of the Bushie League power grab. Lots of Americans see a real Constitutional Crisis here and imo this is a revolution by the Bushies. It's almost like being back in the debate of the Founding Fathers. "I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
James Madison

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
James Madison

It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.
James Madison

What about the fact that you initiated this thread with a post which utterly misquoted Mr. Dinh?

The author of the article was paraphrasing.

Sorta like the president does from time to time, now that I think about it.

Cycloptichorn

Brandon, Dinh is quoted as saying this, "I do trust the president when he asserts that he has reviewed it carefully and therefore is convinced that there is full legal authority." I dont trust the President. Bob Barr dont seem to trust the President. Millions of Americans see a power grab with the warrentless spying, portions of the Patriot Act, Cheney's declassification, the twisting of intelligence that led us into war. Most Americans believe Bushie deliberately lied us into war. Some of you guys seem to be saying that there is no Executive Branch power grab going on here by Bushie. And of course that's absurd. America is in a huge Constitutional crisis. It's not like the Federalist Society is not real. Or that Alito dont have strong feelings and his opponents are not concerned about that. Lots of liberals, conservatives, independants, libertarians sure know there's a crisis.

Do Bush supporters hate their country?
By Jaime O'Neill

Sometimes the people who still fervently support George W. Bush seem just plain stupid, and other times it seems they must be dishonest and even malevolent, harboring a hatred for their country that allows them to support misguided ideas and private agendas over the public good. In more reasonable moods, I want to believe that the Bush supporters are just like me in simply wanting what is best for the country safety, security, fairness and a commitment to a government that observes the principles upon which our nation was founded. When I'm thinking that way, I assume we don't disagree on goals and objectives, just on the most effective way to achieve those goals and objectives.
It's hard to keep that thought, though, when the lies keep piling up higher and deeper, and when so much of the energy of Bush supporters goes into evading reality. Is it really possible for there to be an honest difference of opinion about the calamitous Bush decision to invade Iraq? No weapons of mass destruction there, as we were told there were. No link between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein, as we were told there was, and as we continue to be urged to believe by deceptive administration rhetoric. Almost no likelihood that a stable democracy will be possible in an Iraq rent by ethnic feuds and anti-democratic traditions. Billions upon billions of dollars squandered in Iraq, and billions more stolen by corrupt U.S. contractors. Meanwhile, the Homeland Security entity Bush created has shown itself to be yet another huge government boondoggle, and utterly witless in responding to a national emergency.

Beyond that, we have the shameful spectacle of Americans who call themselves patriots urging a forfeiture of our rights and liberties as U.S. citizens the rights to due process and the protections devised by the founding fathers to guard against abuses of power.

And beyond that, we have breaches of national security in the outing of a CIA agent for no better reason than spite. We have the staffing of all kinds of highly paid and important government jobs with incompetent administration cronies and partners in crime. We have repeated and massive failures of imagination. No one could have imagined a) people flying planes into U.S. skyscrapers, b) a storm of the magnitude of Katrina, or c) a Palestinian militant group like Hamas winning elections in Palestine these being just a few of the things Condoleezza Rice has said the administration couldn't imagine.

Beyond all of that, we have the growing gap between rich and poor, the exportation of American jobs by the hundreds of thousands, the wasteful and exploitive health care system that continues to bankrupt American industries, the packing of the Supreme Court with judges confirmed despite their stonewalling before the congressional oversight committees charged with vetting them before they assumed lifetime appointments. We have been unable or unwilling to secure our borders. We have seen corruption on an unprecedented scale and massive neglect of dozens of urgent national needs. Science has been disregarded whenever it runs afoul of the profit motive, and we have a foreign policy no one, least of all the people in charge of it, seems to understand.

http://www.paradisepost.com/columns/ci_3498492

When Bob Barr starts making sense, then the terrorists have won.

What does that have to do with you falsely attributing words to Mr. Dinh?

No Checks, Many Imbalances
By George F. Will
Washington Post Op-Ed

Thursday 16 February 2006; A27

The next time a president asks Congress to pass something akin to what Congress passed on Sept. 14, 2001 - the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) - the resulting legislation might be longer than Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past." Congress, remembering what is happening today, might stipulate all the statutes and constitutional understandings that it does not intend the act to repeal or supersede.

But, then, perhaps no future president will ask for such congressional involvement in the gravest decision government makes - going to war. Why would future presidents ask, if the present administration successfully asserts its current doctrine? It is that whenever the nation is at war, the other two branches of government have a radically diminished pertinence to governance, and the president determines what that pertinence shall be. This monarchical doctrine emerges from the administration's stance that warrantless surveillance by the National Security Agency targeting American citizens on American soil is a legal exercise of the president's inherent powers as commander in chief, even though it violates the clear language of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was written to regulate wartime surveillance.

Administration supporters incoherently argue that the AUMF also authorized the NSA surveillance - and that if the administration had asked, Congress would have refused to authorize it. The first assertion is implausible: None of the 518 legislators who voted for the AUMF has said that he or she then thought it contained the permissiveness the administration discerns in it. Did the administration, until the program became known two months ago? Or was the AUMF then seized upon as a justification? Equally implausible is the idea that in the months after Sept. 11, Congress would have refused to revise the 1978 law in ways that would authorize, with some supervision, NSA surveillance that, even in today's more contentious climate, most serious people consider conducive to national security.

Anyway, the argument that the AUMF contained a completely unexpressed congressional intent to empower the president to disregard the FISA regime is risible coming from this administration. It famously opposes those who discover unstated meanings in the Constitution's text and do not strictly construe the language of statutes.

The administration's argument about the legality of the NSA program also has been discordant with its argument about the urgency of extending the USA Patriot Act. Many provisions of that act are superfluous if a president's wartime powers are as far-reaching as today's president says they are.

And if, as some administration supporters say, amending the 1978 act to meet today's exigencies would have given America's enemies dangerous information about our capabilities and intentions, surely FISA and the Patriot Act were both informative. Intelligence professionals reportedly say that the behavior of suspected terrorists has changed since Dec. 15, when the New York Times revealed the NSA surveillance. But surely America's enemies have assumed that our technologically sophisticated nation has been trying, in ways known and unknown, to eavesdrop on them.

Besides, terrorism is not the only new danger of this era. Another is the administration's argument that because the president is commander in chief, he is the "sole organ for the nation in foreign affairs." That non sequitur is refuted by the Constitution's plain language, which empowers Congress to ratify treaties, declare war, fund and regulate military forces, and make laws "necessary and proper" for the execution of all presidential powers . Those powers do not include deciding that a law - FISA, for example - is somehow exempted from the presidential duty to "take care that the laws be faithfully executed."

The administration, in which mere obduracy sometimes serves as political philosophy, pushes the limits of assertion while disdaining collaboration. This faux toughness is folly, given that the Supreme Court, when rejecting President Harry S Truman's claim that his inherent powers as commander in chief allowed him to seize steel mills during the Korean War, held that presidential authority is weakest when it clashes with Congress.

Immediately after Sept. 11, the president rightly did what he thought the emergency required, and rightly thought that the 1978 law was inadequate to new threats posed by a new kind of enemy using new technologies of communication. Arguably he should have begun surveillance of domestic-to-domestic calls - the kind the Sept. 11 terrorists made.

But 53 months later, Congress should make all necessary actions lawful by authorizing the president to take those actions, with suitable supervision. It should do so with language that does not stigmatize what he has been doing, but that implicitly refutes the doctrine that the authorization is superfluous.

A Constitutional Crisis

By Al Gore, AlterNet. Posted January 17, 2006.
http://www.alternet.org/rights/30905/