David Kravitz’s Wired article, How Obama Officials Cried ‘Terrorism’ to Cover Up a Paperwork Error begins like this:
After seven years of litigation, two trips to a federal appeals court and $3.8 million worth of lawyer time, the public has finally learned why a wheelchair-bound Stanford University scholar was cuffed, detained and denied a flight from San Francisco to Hawaii: FBI human error.
FBI agent Kevin Kelley was investigating Muslims in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2004 when he checked the wrong box on a terrorism form, erroneously placing Rahinah Ibrahim on the no-fly list.
What happened next was the real shame. Instead of admitting to the error, high-ranking President Barack Obama administration officials spent years covering it up. Attorney General Eric Holder, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and a litany of other government officials claimed repeatedly that disclosing the reason Ibrahim was detained, or even acknowledging that she’d been placed on a watch list, would cause serious damage to the U.S. national security. Again and again they asserted the so-called “state secrets privilege” to block the 48-year-old woman’s lawsuit, which sought only to clear her name.
The article includes a link to Attorney General Eric Holder’s declaration in Ibrahim v. DHS. It’s pretty awful — even worse than the article makes it sound. Here are the last two paragraphs (emphasis added):
16. On September 23, 2009, I announced a new Executive Branch policy governing the assertion and defense of the state secrets privilege in litigation. Under this policy, the Department of Justice will defend an assertion of the state secrets privilege in litigation, and seek dismissal of a claim on that basis, only when necessary to protect against the risk of significant hann to national security. See Exhibit 1 (State Secrets Policy),§ l(A). The policy provides further that an application of a privilege assertion must be narrowly tailored and that dismissal be sought pursuant to the privilege assertion only when necessary to prevent significant harm to national security. !d. § 1(B). Moreover, “[t]he Department will not defend an invocation of the privilege in order to: (i) conceal violations of the law, inefficiency, or administrative error; (ii) prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency of the United States Government; (iii) restrain competition; or (iv) prevent or delay the release of information the release of which would not reasonably be expected to cause significant harm to national security.” !d. § 1(C). The policy also establishes detailed procedures for review of a proposed assertion of the state secrets privilege in a particular case. !d. § 2. Those procedures require submissions by the relevant Government departments or agencies specifying “(i) the nature of the information that must be protected from unauthorized disclosure; (ii) the significant harm to national security that disclosure can reasonably be expected to cause; [and] (iii) the reason why unauthorized disclosure is reasonably likely to cause such harm.” ld § 2(A). Based on my personal consideration of the matter, I have determined that the requirements for an assertion and defense of the state secrets privilege have been met in this case in accord with the September 2009 State Secrets Policy.
I declare under penalty of perjury that the foregoing is true and correct.
I think someone should lose their job over this. Perhaps that someone is the person who misinformed the Attorney General as to the facts of the case, perhaps not. In any event, Attorney General Eric Holder owes us all an explanation as to why that someone is not him.
I could be wrong about this, but I recall reading that the case which established the “state secrets privilege” had its evidence declassified by aging out and it turned out that basically the government was asserting that privilege not for a legitimate reason but to cover up that they were in the wrong. Much like this case actually, but worse since people were actually killed in that case.
Not a lawyer, but I would think that fundamental logic would require that when a “privilege” is demonstrated to be established based on false evidence that the rationale for that privilege collapses, and the privilege is null and void. That is the appropriate penalty.
The Justice Department has bigger problems.
I say this from a non-partisan perspective, but “Fast and Furious” was part of a program extending back to the Bush Administration that involved picking winners and losers in the Mexican drug war.
It’s probably something that grew out of the Merida Initiative, and the use of the new NORTHCOM military command in Mexico.
http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=119074
Perhaps you’re aware of this:
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-government-and-the-sinaloa-cartel-2014-1
The article details the involvement of DEA officials with the Mexican
drug cartels. It implies that “Fast and Furious” was part of a program
dating back to the Bush Administration, though this story has a much
more detailed pedigree.
Note the involvement of one Vicente Zambada-Niebla. A few years ago, he
was part of a “state secrets” immunity deal involving drug trafficking:
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2011/11/us-prosecutors-seeking-prevent-dirty-secrets-drug-war-surfacing-cartel-
He came to my attention via a series of stories involving two jets in
Mexico, a DC-9 that was forced off a runway while trying to take off,
and a Gulfstream II jet with tail number n987sa that was used in a
number of CIA rendition flights (the kidnapping/torture program)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendition_aircraft#N987SA
When the CIA torture jet crashed in the Gulf of Mexico, it was found to
have about 4 tons of cocaine on board:
http://dissidentvoice.org/2008/09/crashed-jet-carrying-cocaine-linked-to-cia/
which sort of implies that Oliver North’s drug running network is alive
and well:
http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB113/
The plane was registered to a CIA front company:
http://www.madcowprod.com/10092007.html
though it was owned by some Brazillians illegally (the tail number is
reserved for American owers)
This also further substantiates claims by UN officials that lots of drug
money flows though “official” channels, and may have been the only
liquid asset banks had during the height o the financial crisis:
http://www.theguardian.com/global/2009/dec/13/drug-money-banks-saved-un-cfief-claims
Which claim was also borne out by revelations in the wake of the Wells
Fargo / Wachovia merger:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-29/banks-financing-mexico-s-drug-cartels-admitted-in-wells-fargo-s-u-s-deal.html
The story gets even more interesting when you start to tease out the
9/11 connections:
http://www.madcowprod.com/01312008.html
and some odd maneuvering by the NTSB:
http://www.ntsb.gov/alj/o_n_o/docs/AVIATION/5180.PDF
Between the Mexico connection, and the dramatic increase in Afghan opium
production since the fall of the Taliban, the US seems to be sitting on
top of the planet’s most profitable drug running operations (in addition
to being the world’s largest arms exporter).
Except cannabis, which is still outlawed, despite causing far fewer
health problems than cocaine or heroin. In fact, although cannabis is
listed as a Schedule I substance under the Controlled Substances Act, as
having no medical use, the US Department of Health and Human services
actually owns a medical marijuana patent:
http://www.google.com/patents/US6630507
The War on Drugs is not about curbing abuse, it’s about fear and
intimidation, keeping private prisons populated, and controlling
neurotransmitters.
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Holder perjured himself during fast and furious … not that most of the beautiful people care about that because the operation was aimed at gun owners.
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