During Attorney General Eric Holder's testimony at his Senate confirmation hearing, he was asked about the new expanded "Guidelines for Domestic FBI Operations," rushed into place in December by then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey and still current FBI Director Robert Mueller.
The FBI in 2009 can open an investigation (a "threat assessment") on anyone without a judicial warrant and without any evidence - not even in the rule of law, "an articulable suspicion of criminal activity." As Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington legislative office, says: "Since, under these guidelines, a generalized "threat" is enough to begin an investigation, the FBI will be given carte blanche to begin surveillance."
The guidelines also allow the FBI to consider race and ethnicity in their "threat assessments." Asked by Russ Feingold, D-Wis., about this purging of our individual Fourth Amendment liberties in both national security and criminal investigations, Holder said: "The guidelines are necessary because the FBI is changing its mission ... from a pure investigative agency to one that deals with national security."
Holder did add, in Joe Palazzolo's Legal Times report, that he would "see how these guidelines work in operation." Will he find out for us, as they are covertly in operation, which actually innocent Americans have been tracked in these "threat assessments" and secured in various intelligence agencies' databases?
Currently, there is some purported judicial supervision of the NSA and other intelligence agencies. But that law - in real times in real life - permits the omnivorous NSA to check on the phones and Internet use of suspected American "threats" without telling a judge who the person being targeted is and why.
While President Bush, before having this masked congressional authority to engage in warrantless wiretapping on us, was discarding the Fourth Amendment, our major telecommunications companies were lawlessly his helpers. They have been immunized from prosecution from those past acts under the 2008 FISA legislation. Although President Obama and Attorney General Holder both assure us that "no one is above the law," they make exceptions of the telecommunications lawbreakers and Bush.
Holder also appears to favor immunizing other violators of not only our laws but also international treaties, according to an exclusive Jan. 28 Washington Times story by Eli Lake. In an interview with Lake, Christopher "Kit" Bond, R-Miss., said he'd support Holder for attorney general after "Mr. Holder assured him privately that Mr. Obama's Justice Department will not prosecute former Bush officials involved in the (enhanced) interrogations program."
A Holder aide disputed the story, but the next day, Eli Lake and Ben Conery reported in the Washington Times in a "little-noticed written response to questions from Republican Sens. Jon Kyl of Arizona and John Cornyn of Texas, Mr. Holder wrote: "But where it is clear that a government agent has acted in reasonable and good faith reliance on Justice Department legal opinions' authoritatively permitting his conduct, I would find it difficult to justify commencing a full-blown criminal investigation, let alone a prosecution."
Since certain CIA interrogators broke our own War Crimes Act and Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions in their interrogations, our new attorney general is invoking the Nuremberg Defense - innocence for following orders. Is he also speaking for President Obama?