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Tuesday, December 5, 2006

Civil Liberties Board Under Fire

By Rebecca Carr | Tuesday, December 5, 2006, 05:46 PM

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board held its first public meeting Tuesday since its inception two years ago.

The three-hour hearing at Georgetown University’s ornate Gaston Hall was sparsely attended by the public despite the controversy surrounding President Bush’s domestic eavesdropping program and concern about other anti-terrorist programs.

But the panel, created to guard against civil liberty violations, came under sharp attack from advocacy groups for being slow to investigate what they view as major infractions.

The board does not have the power to protect the public against civil liberty transgressions, said Caroline Fredrickson, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington legislative office.

“This hearing is a welcome but long overdue first step in the right direction to air just some of the civil liberties transgressions of this administration over the past five years,” Fredrickson said.

For example, the board should begin investigating the president’s domestic eavesdropping program that he authorized after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington in addition to broad data mining efforts to analyze information about millions of people, she said.

The board should also look at the government’s claim that it has the power to designate anyone, including Americans, “enemy combatants” without charge, Fredrickson said.

And the board should look at how the public’s right to know has been curtailed and the Freedom of Information Act severely weakened since the terrorist attacks. The board should examine federal watch lists and the legal implications for being placed on such a list, she said.

“When our government is torturing innocent people and spying on Americans without a warrant, the PCLOB (board) should act—indeed, should have acted long ago,” Fredrickson said. “Clearly you have been fiddling while Rome burns.”

Lanny Davis, a board member, said the board was sincere in its effort to protect civil liberties. He said anyone who has a problem with the board’s lack of power should take it up with Congress, not the White House since Congress created the board.

Congress is also discouraged by the power of the board

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., said the board needs the same level of power that the national commission investigating the Sept. 11th attacks had. She introduced legislation to do just that.

“The civil liberties board’s first public appearance is nice but giving it real independence and power is what we really need,” Maloney said.

Right now, the board does not have access to timely information about privacy issues, Maloney said. “This is not what the 9/11 commissioners had hope and it is not what America expected,” she said.

The board, for example, received briefings in the last two weeks on the government’s domestic eavesdropping program and international bank transaction monitoring program.

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Phil and John, Together Again

By Ken Herman | Tuesday, December 5, 2006, 11:07 AM

There he was, all smiles and sporting a McCain lapel pin as one of many minglers on hand for Sen, John McCain’s Monday night holiday reception at the Corcoran Gallery of Art.

Former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, who has had something of an on-again, off-again relationship with McCain, says he is on again as an enthusiastic supporter of the Arizona senator’s probable White House bid.

Some history: McCain backed Gramm’s unsucccesful 1996 bid for the GOP presidential nomination. But in 2000, Gramm skipped over McCain and endorsed then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush’s race for the White House. McCain and Gramm, who had routinely talked and visited with each other, went months without speaking.

The ties had been so close that two of the top aides in Gramm’s presidential bid - John Weaver and Howard Opinsky - went to work for McCain in 2000.

Gramm and McCain openly differed on several major topics, including McCain’s crusade for campaign finance reform, an effort Gramm said would help Democrats.

All was forgotten around the buffet tables at the Corcoran on Monday night as Gramm, now an executive at UBS Warburg Investment Bank of New York , said McCain is just what America needs in the White House.

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Food for Thought

By Ken Herman | Tuesday, December 5, 2006, 10:34 AM

Couple of interesting meals on the president’s schedule today.

Former Secretary of State Jim Baker drops by the White House for lunch today in advance of tomorrow’s long-awaited release of the Baker-Hamilton report on Iraq. Spokesman Tony Snow says the president and Baker will have a “conversation about the direction of the report.” Baker, says Snow, will have an opportunity to “frame it a bit,” but is not expected to drop off a copy.

“And if he does,” says Snow, “we’re not going to bring in Silly Putty to copy it.”

Tomorrow morning, Bush meets with the full Baker-Hamilton commission - officially known as the Iraq Study Group - at 7 a.m.

Tonight, it’s a “social dinner” with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, whose term ends at year’s end. Bush wants to thank Annan for his service, says Snow.

Annan is a longtime critic of Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003. In a recent BBC interview, Annan said Iraq was better off under Saddam Hussein than it is now.

“They had a dictator who was brutal but they had their streets,” he said. “Their kids could go to school and come back without a mother or father worrying, ‘Am I going to see my child again?’”

Snow’s response: “I see, so he is for the controlled slaughter of tens of thousands.”

Annan also said the Iraq war provided the “biggest regret” of his tenure.

“It was 23 wonderful colleagues and friends I sent to Iraq who got blown away. They went to Iraq to try and help clean up in the aftermath of a war I genuinely did not believe in, and these people, who were wonderful professionals, wonderful friends, were blown up overnight. And of course when that happens, you ask questions, you know: Would they be here if there hadn’t been this situation? Would they be here if I hadn’t asked them to go?” he said.

Snow said he doubts Bush and Annan will get much beyond social pleasantries at the dinner.

“This is a small dinner and typically these are dinners that are social occasions where people chat and have a social evening,” he said. “This is not going to be sitting around and having debates with the secretary-general. Instead it is going to be an attempt to thank him for his service.”

And, Snow says, it shows that Bush is the kind of guy who can be hospitable to those with whom he disagrees.

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