Mukasey = Lackey

If you had any illusions that our current Attorney General Michael Mukasey might work out to be less of a disingenuous Bush administration toady than Alberto Gonzales, I’m sorry to tell you that this week, Mukasey proved himself to be more of the same.

This is the same Michael Mukasey who ruled that an American Citizen - Jose Padilla - could be held as an enemy combatant for years without being charged of a crime.

The same Michael Mukasey who represented twin towers owner Larry Silverstein who claimed that because two planes hit his property, he was entitled to double his insurance claim.

So we shouldn’t be surprised at Mukasey’s latest address at the Commonwealth Club of SF last week. The Atty General’s speech demanded that Congress grant the president warrantless eavesdropping powers, and also give the telcom companies retroactive immunity for the eavesdropping they’ve already done on Bushs’ behalf. Expected behavior, to be sure - but what was unexpected, and outrageous was Mukasey’s rationale...

Mukasey claimed that officials “shouldn't need a warrant when somebody with a phone in Iraq picks up a phone and calls somebody in the United States because that's the call that we may really want to know about. And before 9/11, that's the call that we didn't know about. We knew that there has been a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn't know precisely where it went."

First off, regarding FISA law, Mukasey is either lying, or is ignorant of the law, which is alarming considering that Mukasey is the Atty General of the US. Pre-911 FISA law allows such a call to be intercepted without a warrant, so long as a warrant is sought within 72 hours of the event. My guess is, he knew that, but was betting that the American people don’t know the facts, so he could sway support for increased eavesdropping powers.

So that leaves with his claim that the government knew about a call from a safe house in Afghanistan that if intercepted, could have prevented 9-11 - yet incredibly, the government did nothing about it.

Is this a lie, or was our government that incompetent. MSNBC newscaster Keith Olbermann quipped “I’m betting on lying. If not, somebody in Congress better put that man under oath right quick.

I hope Olbermann is right and this is just another lie from the Bush administration to scare and distract Americans so they can subvert the Constitution even further. Because if Mukasey’s claim is true, this is huge news: The 911 Investigation revealed that the CIA and FBI had intercepted a variety of messages, but nothing was ever mentioned about the kind of call that Mukasey describes.

And whether it’s true or false, this should be a major story covered by all the mainstream news outlets. But it wasn’t. Sadly, the Mukasey story was mentioned a paltry 73 times last week, compared with 1043 mentions of Obama’s bowling score.

Hats off to Salon.com blogger Glenn Greenwald, who really took this story and ran with it. He contacted Lee Hamilton, Vice Chairman of the 911 Commission to find out if he’d ever heard about a pre-911 phone call from an Afghan safe house into the US that relayed information about the attacks. Hamilton refused comment, which Greenwald fairly characterised as unacceptable. The 911 commission should reply about whether Mukasey’s claim is true - the American people deserve to know, and Mukasey needs to be accountable for his actions.

Greenwald also contacted 911 Commission Executive Director Philip Zelikow. Zelikow did reply, basically saying that nothing like what Mukasey described actually happened, but leaving it at that.

But the story did get the attention of House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, who along with two Subcommittee chairs, sent a letter to Mukasey demanding he explain his understanding of the FISA laws, and to justify his claim that the Afghan safe house call actually happened.

The Dept. of Justice finally responded, blaming restrictions within Executive order 12333 issued in 1981 by Reagan as the reason why the phone call could not be intercepted. But 12333 has nothing to do with FISA, and could have been easily rescinded by George Bush - and actually E.O. 12333 was amended twice by Bush before 9-11. So the DOJ response actually heightens, rather than resolves the misleading nature of Mukasey’s statement, which appears to be yet another exploitation of 911 in order to scare the American people and weaken the US Constitution.