Justice Department Stops Investigating Itself over NSA Eavesdropping
The papers report this morning that the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) has ended its investigation into the role of DoJ lawyers in the development of the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program (NYTimes, WaPo). Why, you ask?
OPR director H. Marshall Jarrett wrote yesterday to Rep. Maurice Hinchey, who had requested the investigation, to notify him that it was over. Said Jarrett, “we have been unable to make meaningful progress in our investigation because OPR has been denied security clearances for access to information about the NSA program. Without these clearances, we cannot investigate this matter and therefore have closed our investigation.” The office requested clearance for its staff in January; the request was denied on Tuesday, so Jarrett called the whole thing off.
The Times quotes DoJ spokesman Brian Roehrkasse as calling the NSA eavesdropping “highly classified and exceptionally sensitive,” adding “only those involved in national security with a specific need to know are provided details about this classified program.”
Apparently investigating the program doesn’t get you the need to know you need in order to, well, investigate the program. Road-blocking an ethics investigation doesn’t seem to be the smartest route to take at the moment, and I hope the OPR will revisit this issue and continue to at least try to do its job. There are major questions here about the role of DoJ staff in the construction of this NSA program, and they should not go unanswered.
3 Responses to “Justice Department Stops Investigating Itself over NSA Eavesdropping”
You are absolutely correct. In this age of 24 hour news coverage that demands more transparency, government is trying to do the opposite. Hopefully the current administration will become more transparent before the Democrats win the House and make them more transparent.
JJS
I was amused by some quote in the news reports which said that the OPR was not intended to investigate wrong-doing in other agencies, but to monitor lawyers for ethics violations. So, apparently, if a lawyer is up to “wrong-doing” that is not an issue of ethics?
The administration flunkies damn well know these actions are unlawful but they do not care. There are no more checks and balances and the Executive branch is no longer under any legal constraints. This should end once and for all any debate about whether or not the “Coup of 2000″ has resulted in an All-American fascist dictatorship. Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Franco, Peron, the list goes on and on but every single one of those guys ran their government the same way that Bush is running his government. Let’s see, 1776 to 2006, that’s 230 years. It was a nice experiment, but you can stick a fork in American democracy… it’s done.
PING:
TITLE: Let the Justice Department investigate!
BLOG NAME: The Glittering Eye
The Justice Department has dropped its investigation of the FISA wiretapping matter because investigators were unable to obtain clearance to review material necessary to the investigation:
WASHINGTON, May 10 — An investigation by the Justice Departme…