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View Full Version : Possible (U.S.) constitutional crisis -- ?



ckaihatsu
15th November 2015, 01:53
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Senator Feinstein (along with Senator Pat Leahy) has sent a rather angry letter (reasonably so!) to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, expressing her strong displeasure over this state of affairs:

Dear Attorney General Lynch and Director Comey:

We firmly believe that appropriate DOJ and FBI officials must read the full 6,700-page Senate Intelligence Committee Study of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program in order to understand what happened and draw appropriate lessons. This is exactly what Director Comey promised during his testimony before the Senate Appropriations Committee on March 12, 2015, when he said he would designate FBI officials to read the full, final version of the Committee's Study and consider the lessons that can be learned from it. Director Comey also acknowledged that former FBI Director Bob Mueller ordered FBI agents not to participate in the CIA program. Unfortunately, as the executive summary of the Study makes clear, the Department of Justice was among those parts of the Executive Branch that were misled about the program, and DOJ officials' understanding of this history is critical to its institutional role going forward.

We are gravely disappointed that, according to Assistant Attorney General Peter Kadzik's letter dated August 5, 2015, the Department of Justice is citing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case, ACLU v. CIA as an excuse to refuse to allow Executive Branch officials to review the full and final Study. This DOJ decision prevents the FBI and other parts of the Executive Branch from reading the full 6,700-page Study and learning from the mistakes of the past to ensure that they are not repeated. Further, personnel at the National Archives and Records Administration have stated that, based on guidance from the Department of Justice, they will not respond to questions about whether the Study constitutes a federal record under the Federal Records Act because the FOIA case is pending. [...]




https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151110/01353532771/doj-has-blocked-everyone-executive-branch-reading-senates-torture-report.shtml




http://org.salsalabs.com/dia/track.jsp?v=2&c=kwA44WsW4rbZ36rc2qdg2MWFFiMHaZGX

olahsenor
15th November 2015, 02:00
It will never pass. As long as there was proof beyond doubt that there were human rights violations in Guantanamo and there were live witnesses, every presidential term that succeeds would make it an outstanding issue and the Republicans shall never win again. The Political Left has gained foothold of Congress, Senate, White House, law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

ckaihatsu
15th November 2015, 02:29
It will never pass. As long as there was proof beyond doubt that there were human rights violations in Guantanamo and there were live witnesses, every presidential term that succeeds would make it an outstanding issue and the Republicans shall never win again. The Political Left has gained foothold of Congress, Senate, White House, law enforcement and intelligence agencies.


Allow me to elaborate -- there's nothing to 'pass', and this isn't about governmental party partisanship.

This is a *schism* between the legislative and executive branches of the U.S. government, which is a state of affairs that can't be sustained indefinitely, because there are only *three* branches of government altogether. (Consider the legs of a three-legged stool.) I don't know exactly how festering this can potentially become, but I do know that it has to be resolved one way or the other because the issue deals with the *institutional* identity of the Department of Justice, based on its history in the CIA torture program, as is clearly stated in the Feinstein letter.

The DOJ is currently stuck in an ambiguous political 'zone', between the CIA on the right (using torture), and the legislative branch and the FBI on the 'left' (having *not* participated in the CIA program, and its officials being directed to read the report on CIA torture). The DOJ has been implicated, in Feinstein's letter, as having participated in the torture program, meaning that its past and future political identity and function are unclear for the time being -- again, objectively tenuous at best.