Marcy Wheeler, over at Emptywheel.net (and soon to be appearing over at The / / Intercept), has published one hell of a "small" post on her blog over the past couple of hours. And, perhaps the biggest "zinger" of all is what she notes in her analysis (again, Marcy is the person whom Newsweek recently referred to as "The Woman Who Knows The NSA's Secrets") concerning Oregon Democratic Senator Ron Wyden's well-thought-out questions and sentiments on the matter. (IMHO, there's much more than enough substance in Marcy's revelations to qualify it as the lead story in tomorrow's New York Times...in a perfect world, anyway. But, you'll have to read her whole--albeit very brief--piece to understand what I just wrote...;-)
("OLC" = "Office of Legal Counsel.")
Jack Goldsmith’s Still Active Presidential Dragnet Authorization
By: emptywheel Wednesday February 26, 2014 10:21 am
In the follow-up questions for CIA General Counsel nominee Caroline Krass, Ron Wyden asked a series of his signature loaded questions. With it, he pointed to the existence of still-active OLC advice — Jack Goldsmith’s May 6, 2004 memo on Bush’s illegal wiretap program — supporting the conduct of a phone (but not Internet) dragnet based solely on Presidential authorization…
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…Of course, just yesterday both Dianne Feinstein and Mark Udall made it clear that no one at DOJ is paying close attention to EO 12333 — that is, Presidentially — authorized activities. So how would she know?
One way or another, the Executive Branch still has OLC sanction to conduct a phone dragnet off the books, using only Presidential authorization.
The question is whether, in addition to pointing to this authorization, Wyden is also suggesting that the Executive is currently using it.
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Here's the Wiki Page LINK for ("Executive Order") "EO12333."
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