FBI not investigating Pelosi's CIA charge

By GottaLaff

Ever have one of those days? I'm having three of them today. But at least I'm not Nancy Pelosi or a member of the CIA:

FBI Director Robert Mueller told members of the House Wednesday that it is a crime to lie to Congress, but said the bureau is not investigating the charge by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that the CIA misled her.

In response to questions from California Rep. Darrell Issa, ranking Republican on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Mueller said procedures require Congress to refer requests for an investigation to the Justice Department. If it is determined by Justice officials that a basis exists for an investigation, the FBI would then be asked to look into the matter. When Issa said he has standing to ask for such an investigation, Mueller said he would pass the request on to the Justice Department.

Oh please, by all means, look into everything. Especially the part where BushCo ordered torture. And here's a newsflash: It didn't matter if the entire country knew. BushCo, not Pelosi, not nobody no how, committed the original crime. If anyone else was complicit, then fine, investigate them, too.

But Pelosi didn't call for suspected terrorists to be waterboarded, nor did she do so to justify a fraudulent war.

And while we're at it, torture techniques were not limited to waterboarding. Let's not get caught up in whether someone was specifically subjected to one form of torture. There was an entire smorgasbord of pain/fear/death-inducing practices to choose from.

Smokescreens are so Dick Cheney ago.

Montana should secede

By GottaLaff

CNN's banner right now:

Senate Passes Gitmo Measure: Amendment prevents detainees' transfer to U.S.

Thank you Harry Reid. Thank you Robert Mueller.

This comes after Montana offered to take in 100 prisoners. Perhaps secession is in order. Ricky Perry, are you available for a consult?

Per Thom Hartmann just now: Closing Gitmo is an admission of the failure of the Bush policies. So the fear-mongerers scared Harry Reid into submission, and he fell for it hook, line, and stinker.

Dick Durbin to GOP: 'You ought to have a little more respect' for American corrections officers.

Too late Dick, you've let the R's frame the debate and they won-

FBI director concerned about Gitmo releases

WASHINGTON (AP) — FBI Director Robert Mueller says he is concerned that Guantanamo Bay detainees could support terrorism if sent to the United States.

During his appearance Wednesday before the House Judiciary Committee, Mueller was asked what concerns the FBI has about the Obama administration plans to shut the detention facility by January 2010.

The director said he was generally concerned about whether such individuals might provide financial support to terror networks, radicalize others, or even take part in attacks within the United States.

Bush’s FBI Director Said Torture Didn’t Foil Any Terror Plots

I am now refusing to think anymore today about torture because I am truly finding the whole twisted travesty sickening and demoralizing. Thank you Greg-

Robert Mueller, who was appointed by Bush in 2001 and remains FBI director under Obama, delivered that assessment at the end of this December 2008 article in Vanity Fair on torture:

I ask Mueller: So far as he is aware, have any attacks on America been disrupted thanks to intelligence obtained through what the administration still calls “enhanced techniques”?

“I’m really reluctant to answer that,” Mueller says. He pauses, looks at an aide, and then says quietly, declining to elaborate: “I don’t believe that has been the case.”

That stands in direct contrast to Dick Cheney’s recent claim that torture has been “enormously valuable” in terms of “preventing another mass-casualty attack against the United States.”

And in direct contrast to what is being said by 3/4's of the talking heads. Oh, this guy agrees with Mueller.

Supreme Court to decide Ashcroft, Mueller immunity

By GottaLaff

Somehow I don't think the Supremes will side with a Muslim Pakistani named Iqbal over Ashcroft and Mueller:

The US Supreme Court will hear a case Wednesday on whether cabinet-level officials could be held accountable for controversial tactics President George W. Bush ordered as part of the US-led "war on terror."

Former attorney general John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller have sought immunity from the charges in a lawsuit filed by Javaid Iqbal, a Pakistani national.

Iqbal was among more than 700 Arab and South Asian Muslim men from the New York City area rounded up after the September 11, 2001 attacks. While they were all eventually charged with immigration violations or minor crimes, none was linked to terrorism.

In his lawsuit, Iqbal alleges that Ashcroft and Mueller targeted the men for investigation and punitive detention, sidestepping procedural protections usually granted to such detainees.

Iqbal, who was held at a maximum security section of a Brooklyn federal prison, says he was subjected to harsh treatment and discrimination and that federal officials classified him as a "high interest" suspect because he was a Muslim from Pakistan.

A June 2003 report by the Department of Justice inspector general found "significant problems" in the treatment of detainees like Iqbal. [...]

Ashcroft was among those who "willfully and maliciously approved of, endorsed, and/or ordered that these searches take place" and "knew of, condoned, and willfully and maliciously agreed to subject (Iqbal) to unreasonable, unnecessary and extreme strip and body-cavity searches," according to the suit.

Let's not forget about precedents. It's always about setting precedents:

"The government's position will have the practical effect of ensuring that these officials will never be held accountable for unconstitutional conduct," [Alexander Reinert, who will argue for Iqbal,] said in a statement. [...]

Iqbal claims that during his five-month confinement he was held 23 hours a day in a constantly lit cell where the air conditioning was turned on in the winter and the heat was turned in the summer. He says he was also beaten and strip-searched.

When he was released in 2003, he had lost nearly 44 pounds. I'm guessing he also lost more than a little dignity and most of his emotional equilibrium.

FBI spied on N.Y. Times, Washington Post reporters

By GottaLaff

Yeah, yeah, we spied on you. Whatevs. Sorry. So what's for lunch?

That's the message from FBI Director Robert Mueller to the executive editors of the New York Times and the Washington Post, after an inspector general discovered that the agency had seized telephone records from four US reporters without a grand jury.

Mueller called Times' editor Bill Keller and Post chief Len Downie Friday, "expressing regret" that agents had not followed "proper procedures. The "lapse" occurred nearly four years ago and involved four staff members of the papers.

"The FBI discontinued use of the emergency letters after privacy advocates and internal watchdogs cited hundreds of cases in which agents intentionally, or out of sloppiness, did not follow up their 'exigent' requests with paperwork that linked the submission to a genuine matter of national security," Washington Post reporter Carrie Johnson wrote in an article Saturday.

Um, yeah. It's kind of a no-no.

The records were obtained through what is called an exigent circumstances letter, a demand made by the agency in a practice that skirts civil liberties protections that has flourished in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001.

Neither Mueller nor his agency offered any explanations regarding the nature of the subject of the investigation that involved spying on American reporters based overseas. Writing in the Post today, Johnson noted that the reporters were writing about Islamic terrorism in Southeast Asia.

Why should he have to explain? He's just the Big Boss of the FBI, responsible for spying on innocent citizens because he can.

"FBI agents involved in the undisclosed national security probe stated at the time of the request that they would follow up with subpoenas from a U.S. attorney, but 'no subpoena was ever issued for your telephone toll records,' according to a letter that Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. received yesterday from FBI General Counsel Valerie Caprone," she added.

Such records listed the phone numbers the reporters called and received, but not the actual conversation, similar to the warrantless wiretapping program the Bush Administration has employed in tracking calls American citizens have placed to overseas destinations.

I can't tell you how much safer I feel knowing our government is keeping a close eye on me things.