Meanwhile in Homeland Security Land, we’ve got another candidate for the memory hole!
Remember when the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) promised to investigate the role of its own Justice Department lawyers in constructing and maintaining the admittedly illegal NSA program for spying on Americans without a warrant? The truth is out there, believers proclaimed! Justice will be done!
Why has the Justice Department’s investigation of the Justice Department been all wrapped up, you ask?
Why, “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.”
Who has denied the security clearance to the Justice Department? According to Maurice Hinchey, the Bush administration!
Who runs the Justice Department? The Bush administration!
Who was in charge of the illegal warrantless spying program? The Bush administration!
That’s right, campers: the Bush administration has informed the Bush administration that it cannot investigate the Bush administration because the Bush administration has denied security clearance to the Bush administration necessary to carry out said investigation of the Bush administration.
Say that five times fast!
The good Rep. Hinchey has a long-form version of outrage at this:
It is outrageous that people within the Bush administration have blocked an investigation into the role that members of the Justice Department played in establishing and executing this secret domestic spy program. We must get to the bottom of this and reveal who has stifled this investigation. The Bush administration cannot simply create a Big Brother program and then refuse to answer any questions on how it came about and what it entails. We are not asking for top secret information. We simply want to know how the domestic spy initiative evolved and who is behind what many legal scholars believe is an unconstitutional surveillance program. If the administration believes the program is legal then it should have no problem being forthright with Justice Department investigators as to how it was initiated and is being carried out.
I have a short-form version of outrage at this:
Vote Democrat in November, then Impeach Bush.
