NSA Scandal Now Includes Spying, Perjury & Pres. Lying (Glenn Greenwald)

[kpete]

Thursday, March 02, 2006
The NSA scandal now clearly includes interception of domestic communications, perjury and presidential lying

Alberto Gonzales sent a letter (.pdf) to the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday which contained what Gonzales called numerous "clarifications" of the testimony he gave on February 6 regarding the NSA program. What Gonzales actually did in this letter is identify numerous unambiguous statements to which he testified that were clearly false, and he "corrected" them in order to render them "true" in the narrowest, most legalistic, most misleading sense. In doing so, he left no doubt that the Administration has been engaged in a series of false and misleading statements about their conduct as part of this scandal.

There are many people who are eager to proclaim this scandal dead. But every week brings new revelations of impropriety, deceit, and most importantly, an ever-expanding scope of still-concealed eavesdropping activities on the American people. It is just absurd even to suggest that this scandal is anywhere near a resolution because the level of knowledge we have about what actually happened here – and by "we" I mean both the American people and even the Senate – is minuscule, even especially as to the question of the scope of the government’s warrantless eavesdropping on Americans.

Beyond that, it is becoming increasingly clear that Administration officials, including the President, have been make patently false statements to the public and to the Congress about their conduct here. The Gonzales letter is truly extraordinary for several reasons. Both Orin Kerr and Anonymous Liberal have posted some excellent analysis on the Gonazles letter, both of which I highly recommend reading. To their observations, I want to add a few points:

Lots of explaining and links at:
http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2006/03/nsa-scandal-now-clearly-includes.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/nationalsecurity/gonazles.letter.pdf