Monthly Archives: March 2007

Shhh! Pass it On

Posted on March 5, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

Lawyers, Gun$ and Money (and also unfogged) passes on some Scary Gossip originating at TAPPED.

Posted in Iran | 2 Comments

A Challenge to Warrantless Wiretapping that Isn’t Subject to the State Secrets Defense

Posted on March 5, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

Wired.com has a fascinating article about a case I hadn't heard about. In Top Secret: We're Wiretapping You it describes the story of Wendell Belew:

Belew's bout with the Terrorist Surveillance Program began in 2004, when he was representing the U.S. branch office of the prominent Saudi Arabian charity Al-Haramain. Formerly one of the largest charities in Saudi Arabia, Al-Haramain worked to spread a strict view of Islam through philanthropy, missionary work and support for mosques around the world.

Federal officials were investigating the Ashland, Oregon, branch of the group for alleged links to terrorism, and had already frozen the charity's U.S. assets. Belew was one of several lawyers trying to keep Al-Haramain off a U.S. Treasury Department watch list — an effort that sent much paperwork flying back and forth between the attorneys and the Treasury Department's Washington D.C. headquarters across the street from the White House.

On Aug. 20, 2004, fellow Al-Haramain attorney Lynne Bernabei noticed one of the documents from Treasury was marked “top secret.” Bernabei gave the document to attorneys and directors at Al-Haramain's Saudi Arabia headquarters, and gave a copy to Belew. The document was a log of phone conversations Belew and co-counsel Asim Ghafoor had held with a Saudi-based director for the charity named Soliman al-Buthi.

Turns out that was a mistake, and the FBI asked for (and received) the document back, but not before copies got to the Washington Post (also retrieved) and Saudi Arabia (not returned).

And now that document is the smoking gun evidence of an NSA wiretapping program. And because there's documentary proof, the government can't argue — as it has in all other similar cases — that the shady state secrets privilege immunizes it from even having to say whether it is wiretapping people without bothering to get FISA authorization.

And it's not that hard to see why the government didn't go the FISA court on these facts — it's not all that obvious that a court would allow the government to eavesdrop on lawyers working with a client to challenge a government action.

In fact, that sort of eavesdropping — violating attorney-client privilege — is the sort of hypothetical horrible that the government spokespersons routinely pooh-pooh, saying in horrible injured tones, how could you possibly suspect honorable people like us of ever violating constitutional rights so blatantly.

This will be interesting.

Posted in Civil Liberties | 1 Comment

Denver Three Uncovering the Truth

Posted on March 5, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

First there was this big news in the Denver Post, Activists' expulsion cited as Bush rule. The official White House line has been that overzealous volunteers (akin to 'a few bad apples') threw the Denver Three out of a Bush rally either because they had it coming, or in an excess of zeal. But now the truth emerges:

A former White House official who ordered three activists expelled from a 2005 Denver public forum with President Bush says it was White House policy to exclude potentially disruptive guests from Bush's appearances nationwide.

The former official, Steve Atkiss, revealed the policy Friday in an interview after two volunteer bouncers identified him and a current White House staffer, Jamie O'Keefe, as the officials who ordered the so-called Denver Three activists sent away from the event.

The activists had done nothing to disrupt the forum, and two of them sued over the incident.

In sworn legal depositions, bouncers Michael Casper and Jay Bob Klinkerman for the first time named the White House officials who they say ordered the Denver Three to be excluded.

That's followed by this open letter:

Dear ProgressNowAction Member,

In March of 2005, we were forcibly removed from a publicly-funded “town hall” event in Denver at which President Bush promoted his privatization plan for Social Security.

We were removed from that event, along with another friend, simply because someone associated with the event observed that we had a “No More Blood for Oil” bumper sticker on our car. We did absolutely nothing to disrupt the event and had no intention of doing so.

Our Constitutional rights were violated, and we filed a lawsuit against the individuals involved. Our complaint asserted that the White House directed our removal, but the White House has insisted they had no involvement.

In sworn testimony today, however, we've learned that White House staff directly ordered our removal.

Please join us in demanding a public apology by President Bush:

http://www.ProgressNowAction .org/BushApologize

Thomas Jefferson said that “the price of freedom is eternal vigilence.” We were deprived of our right to attend a publicly funded event, and we will not allow this to go unanswered.

Thank you for standing with us!

Sincerely,

Leslie Weise and Alex Young
Colorado Residents and ProgressNowAction Network Members

P.S. Click on the following link to read today's Denver Post article covering the testimony about White House involvement: http://www.denverpost.com/ci_5341085

That was the weekend. I look forward today to some reporters asking the White House why the misled us for so long, and what they have to say about this. After which Tony Snow will stonewall (“not sure what you are talking about”?) or just simply lie.

Posted in Politics: The Party of Sleaze | Comments Off

Feds Say They ‘Lost’ Key Padilla Evidence

Posted on March 4, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

Funny how convenient this is. The government says it 'lost' a key DVD of the final interrogation of Padilla. Newsweek has the scoop:

Terror Watch: The Missing Padilla Video: … what happened to a crucial video recording of Padilla being interrogated in a U.S. military brig that has mysteriously disappeared?

The missing DVD dates from March 2, 2004. It contains a video of the last interrogation session of Padilla, then a declared “enemy combatant” under an order from President Bush, while he was being held in military custody at a U.S. Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. But in recent days, in the course of an unusual court hearing about Padilla's mental condition, a government lawyer disclosed to a surprised courtroom that the Defense Intelligence Agency—which had custody of the evidence—was no longer able to locate the DVD. As a result, it was not included in a packet of classified DVDs that was recently turned over to defense lawyers under orders from Judge Cooke.

The disclosure that the Pentagon had lost a potentially important piece of evidence in one of the U.S. government's highest-profile terrorism cases was met with claims of incredulity by some defense lawyers and human-rights groups monitoring the case. “This is the kind of thing you hear when you're litigating cases in Egypt or Morocco or Karachi,” said John Sifton, a lawyer with Human Rights Watch, one of a number of groups that has criticized the U.S. government's treatment of Padilla. “It is simply not credible that they would have lost this tape. The administration has shown repeatedly they are more interested in covering up abuses than getting to the bottom of whether people were abused.”

“This is the kind of thing you hear when you're litigating cases in Egypt or Morocco or Karachi,” is harsh, but probably deserved.

Posted in Padilla | Comments Off

It’s Not Just Florida

Posted on March 4, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

I do make a certain amount of fun about the weird stuff that happens in South Florida, so it's good to be reminded that equally weird stuff happens elsewhere, including deep in the heartland.

Take this story about John I. Rocko, B.A. in Criminology. According to the Toronto Blade, Police dog's bachelor's degree prods legal howling about chief, it seems that Mr. Rocko is in fact…a police dog. One with higher grades on his B.A. from mail-order degree mill Concordia University than his owner, Chief John McGuire of the Fostoria (Ohio) Police Department received:

While their courseloads were nearly identical, the dog received an A+ in “Structure and Process of the American Court System”; Chief McGuire got a B- in the same class, the transcripts show.

Who got Rocko the Police Dog a $499 B.A. isn't clear, nor are all the legal issues in the case that gave rise to the revelation — they seem to center around the allegation that the Chief's reliance on this dubious credential is one of several reasons why he was validly suspended at the time he purported to arrest the defendant.

Incidentally, a visit to the Concordia web site is enough to make you more than a little nervous. I was quite taken aback by this published testimonial:

Dear Sirs,

I am impressed and delighted with the results of my investment as I have just received my Bachelor of Science degree in Nuclear Science. The transcripts exceed my expectations, my employer recognized the entire course curriculum as almost identical to his own traditional college transcripts. His initial skepticism about distance learning schools immediately disappeared when he got to verify the copies of your governmental registration papers that were included in my credentials package. Your program must be the fulfilment of every professional’s dream. Thank you so much for this fantastic opportunity.

-Francis D.

I sure hope that's a fake, for the idea of a nuclear engineer running some power plant out there on the basis of a mail-order degree is enough to keep you awake at night.

Posted in Law: Criminal Law | Comments Off

Sometimes Miami Law Is Just Like on TV

Posted on March 3, 2007 by Michael Froomkin

I like to tell prospective and incoming law students that real-life law is nothing like what you see on TV. But the trouble is, we live in Miami, a place where much more often than it should be real-life law is just as wacky as what you see on TV.

Take for example this account of the past five days in the annals of Miami Law:

(1) a murder trial in which the witnesses give credible evidence that detectives threatened them (including in one case threatening to take the witness's kids into care) in order to get them to give perjured testimony incriminating the defendant — but the increasingly pathetic-looking Miami-Dade State Attorney's Office says it has no intention of investigating whether the cops are bent;

(2) another murder case that lacked a body now features a lead detective who, on the witness stand, was made to admit to sleeping with a key witness.

(3) A local lawyer who runs a massive ticket-fixing business shot and killed an armed mugger by using the handgun he keeps in the glove compartment of his black Mercedes.

In other local traffic news, six-year-old girl foils carjacker by beating on him

“I smacked him on the head with my book”.

(4) Local Hollywood Police Chief James Scarberry blew a three-year-long FBI sting operation into corruption by officers on his force by blabbing about it to at other cops and local politicians. Not surprisingly, word quickly got out to the prime suspects who immediately tried to resign, stopping the investigation into their associates in its tracks and wasting a giant amount of police work. When first confronted about it the Chief told the press a series of lies, which he's gradually been recanting.

(5) A prominent local builder was jailed yesterday, charged with embezzling public funds to buy a sculpture of a giant watermelon slice. He very vigorously contests the charges, and was photographed giving the finger to a reporter.