Last month,Eli Lake reported that Obama has simply failed to make a single appointment to, or even activate the budget of, The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, the body created pursuant to the report of the 9/11 Commission to safeguard civil liberties in intelligence activities; it has thus been completely dormant. And, with a few very mild exceptions, Obama -- since he was inaugurated -- has affirmatively embraced one radical secrecy doctrine after the next that used to be controversial among Democrats (back when Bush used them).[...]
And indeed, all year long, there's been a series of disclosures about highly controversial intelligence programs that appear to be "off-the-books" and away from the oversight of the Intelligence Committee. In late January, it was revealed that the President was maintaining a "hit list" of American citizens he had authorized to be assassinated far from any "battlefield," followed by yesterday's story describing the use of shadowy private contractors to collect intelligence in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
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To their credit, Congressional Democrats -- over the objections of right-wing Republicans -- have been [attempting] to severely narrow the President's power to conceal intelligence activities from the Senate and House Intelligence Committees and abolish the "Gang of Eight" process.
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Yet these efforts to ensure transparency and oversight have continuously run into one major roadblock: Barack Obama's threat to veto the legislation. Almost immediately after leading Democrats on the Intelligence Committee unveiled their legislation last year, the Obama White House issued a veto threat with extremely dubious (and Bush-replicating) rationales: such oversight would jeopardize secrecy and intrude into "executive privilege." In response to Obama's veto threat, Democrats spent the last nine months accommodating the White House's objections by significantly diluting their legislation [...] and two weeks ago the House passed that diluted bill.
[A]s Walter Pincus reports today in The Washington Post, Obama is now threatening to veto even this diluted bill.
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In other words, the Obama White House -- just as was true for the Bush White House, and using the same rationale -- does not want any meaningful oversight (i.e., briefings beyond the absurd Gang of Eight sham) on whether it's breaking the law in the conduct of its intelligence activities.
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On the same day he threatened to veto this oversight and transparency legislation, President Obama issued a proclamation celebrating "Sunshine Week" and hailing himself and his administration as "the most open and transparent ever." He further praised himself as follows: "We came to Washington to change the way business was done, and part of that was making ourselves accountable to the American people by opening up our government."
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Marcy Wheeler notes what is probably the worst part of all of this, something I consider truly despicable: the administration is also threatening to veto the bill because it contains funding for a new investigation of the 2001 anthrax attacks, on the ground that such an investigation -- in the administration's words -- "would undermine public confidence" in the FBI probe of the attacks "and unfairly cast doubt on its conclusions."
As I've documented at length, not only are there enormous, unresolved holes in the FBI's case, but many of the most establishment-defending mainstream sources -- from leading newspaper editorial pages to key politicians in both parties -- have expressed extreme doubts about the FBI's case and called for an independent investigation. For the administration to actively block an independent review of one of the most consequential political crimes of this generation would probably be its worst act yet, and that's saying quite a bit.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
