Justice Dept. Secretly Grabs AP Phone Records

[DC Tom]

I wonder...if it's true that Iraq's WMDs were moved...some to Syria (an interesting case is being made that this is what happened, since...where did these chemical weapons in Syria come from? Israel said they didn't have any.), and the CIA

 

Any Iraqi chemical weapons that could possibly have made it to Syria are well beyond their "used by" date.

 

And chemical weapons aren't all that hard to make, either. If Aum Shinrikyo could make Sarin, I'm pretty sure the Syrians could manage some damn thing or another.

[OCinBuffalo]

No fish on this? Oh well.

 

In seriousness:

Any Iraqi chemical weapons that could possibly have made it to Syria are well beyond their "used by" date.

 

And chemical weapons aren't all that hard to make, either. If Aum Shinrikyo could make Sarin, I'm pretty sure the Syrians could manage some damn thing or another.

I thought you could store them in a (crap I forget the right chemistry term...inert? No. What the hell? Whatever, not gonna look it up = "unmixed") state, and that they can last for a long time that way. It's only when you mix them up to be used, that they gain an expiration date.

 

That's what I remember from NBC class.

 

Yeah, you can make a lot of stuff from Home Depot and the internet. However, this whole "chain of custody" thing implies that these are the real deal, right?. Why care about a "chain of custody" if it's just home made?

 

But, it's like I said, even if they are from Iraq, no one will admit it, and no one would admit to being wrong. Besides, what I read/heard seems like less fact and more speculation anyhow.

Edited May 17, 2013 by OCinBuffalo

[DC Tom]

No fish on this? Oh well.

 

In seriousness:

 

I thought you could store them in a (crap I forget the right chemistry term...inert? No. What the hell? Whatever, not gonna look it up = "unmixed") state, and that they can last for a long time that way. It's only when you mix them up to be used, that they gain an expiration date.

 

That's what I remember from NBC class.

 

Yeah, you can make a lot of stuff from Home Depot and the internet. However, this whole "chain of custody" thing implies that these are the real deal, right?. Why care about a "chain of custody" if it's just home made?

 

But, it's like I said, even if they are from Iraq, no one will admit it, and no one would admit to being wrong. Besides, what I read/heard seems like less fact and more speculation anyhow.

 

Binary weapons, yes, which is why the US had them.

 

Iraq never had a binary weapon capability - and while high-quality unitary weapons can have a long shelf life (maybe as long as ten years, for good quality), Iraq always had quality control issues...I don't remember the shelf life of their weapons, but I do remember that their standard practice was to deliver supplies from factory "directly" to the battlefield, as the product would be sludge inside of six months.

[John Adams]

 

 

Why are we talking about Bush?

 

We were talking about the steak of unaccountability in the White House.

 

Yes, when I get an answer I don't like, I also change the discussion points.

 

If it's any consolation, my first draft of a response congratulated you for taking 5 guesses at names before finally getting to Tenet. Still, in a thread about accountability, do you feel satisfied that the US fired one guy for the supposed primary reason it went to war, ie, WMDs? I'd think Powell alone would have been calling for heads to roll after his embarrassing UN testimony on WMDs. Go back and watch that sometime. Even he didn't believe it.

 

"Look a flatbed. And disturbed earth. Therefore WMDs. QED"

Edited May 17, 2013 by John Adams

[3rdnlng]

We were talking about the steak of unaccountability in the White House.

 

 

 

If it's any consolation, my first draft of a response congratulated you for taking 5 guesses at names before finally getting to Tenet. Still, in a thread about accountability, do you feel satisfied that the US fired one guy for the supposed primary reason it went to war, ie, WMDs? I'd think Powell alone would have been calling for heads to roll after his embarrassing UN testimony on WMDs. Go back and watch that sometime. Even he didn't believe it.

 

"Look a flatbed. And disturbed earth. Therefore WMDs. QED"

 

Well done. That's some rare insight.

[GG]

We were talking about the steak of unaccountability in the White House.

 

 

 

If it's any consolation, my first draft of a response congratulated you for taking 5 guesses at names before finally getting to Tenet. Still, in a thread about accountability, do you feel satisfied that the US fired one guy for the supposed primary reason it went to war, ie, WMDs? I'd think Powell alone would have been calling for heads to roll after his embarrassing UN testimony on WMDs. Go back and watch that sometime. Even he didn't believe it.

 

"Look a flatbed. And disturbed earth. Therefore WMDs. QED"

 

Yeay, the autistic crow act is back. What do we see from the sky? A shiny object.

 

If you already knew that people took the fall for intelligence failures, why ask the question in the first place? Unless you totally forgot what happened, and jumped back on the shiny object.

 

I don't need to rehash the years we spent arguing Iraq before & after the invasion. But WMDs were a small part of the overall rationale for taking out Saddam, but it's the easiest one for the autistic crows to zero in and latch on to.

[B-Man]

From the Washington Post:

 

 

DOJ TARGETED FOX NEWS REPORTER

 

When the Justice Department began investigating possible leaks of classified information about North Korea in 2009, investigators did more than obtain telephone records of a working journalist suspected of receiving the secret material.

 

They used security badge access records to track the reporter’s comings and goings from the State Department, according to a newly obtained court affidavit. They traced the timing of his calls with a State Department security adviser suspected of sharing the classified report. They obtained a search warrant for the reporter’s personal e-mails.

 

The case of Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, the government adviser, and James Rosen, the chief Washington correspondent for Fox News, bears striking similarities to a sweeping leaks investigation disclosed last week in which federal investigators obtained records over two months of more than 20 telephone lines assigned to the Associated Press.

 

 

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[PTS]

From the Washington Post:

 

 

DOJ TARGETED FOX NEWS REPORTER

 

.

 

Chicago thug politics is now infecting DC.

 

What a joke. Looks like it might have to do with the Fast & Furious investigation. Will Eric Holder say this, too, was the most dangerous national security leak he's ever seen?

 

I'll say it again, this Obama administration is filled with corruption at all levels and it will be exposed sooner or later.

[DC Tom]

They used security badge access records to track the reporter’s comings and goings from the State Department, according to a newly obtained court affidavit.

 

There is ABSOLUTELY no right to privacy concerning that point. That, at least, is a total non-issue.

[B-Man]

TWEET OF THE DAY: #Fact: DOJ had more surveillance of @JamesRosenFNC than Tsarnaev brothers.

 

 

“These abuses of the First Amendment wouldn’t be happening if we had a constitutional law professor as president.”

[John Adams]

 

 

There is ABSOLUTELY no right to privacy concerning that point. That, at least, is a total non-issue.

 

But his gmail account? The accusation is that Rosen was soliciting classified info.

 

"From the beginning of their relationship, the reporter asked, solicited and encouraged Mr. Kim to disclose sensitive United States internal documents and intelligence information … by employing flattery and playing to Mr. Kim's vanity and ego," Reyes wrote in his affidavit.

 

"He said the reporter "instructed Mr. Kim on a covert communications plan ... to facilitate communication." The affidavit said they used nicknames in subsequent emails and asterisks as signals if Kim wanted to talk by phone."

 

The monitoring lasted for 2 days at least according to the LA Times article. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-fbi-reporter-20130521,0,661230.story

 

More to come on this story.

Edited May 21, 2013 by John Adams

[B-Man]

"The focus should be on those people who break their oath and put the American people at risk, not the reporters who gather the information."

 

-Eric Holder, under oath in front of the House Judiciary Committee

 

 

And he (allegedly) said this with a straight face.

 

 

 

 

and I am sure that Mr. Obama himself will be outraged when he reads about this in the newspapers on Friday

[IDBillzFan]

and I am sure that Mr. Obama himself will be outraged when he reads about this in the newspapers on Friday

 

If he relies mostly on NBC, he may never hear about it.

[DC Tom]

But his gmail account? The accusation is that Rosen was soliciting classified info.

 

I was pretty damn specific on what I was talking about, wasn't I?

[John Adams]

I was pretty damn specific on what I was talking about, wasn't I?

 

I wonder why so much is being made of the DoS security pass log. I mean--outside the need to throw raw meat to the salivating masses. The gmail intrusion seems to be the real issue.

 

There's a NYT editorial today justifying the AP wiretaps--good timing!

[B-Man]

I have little respect for Eugene Robinson, he routinely writes bigoted, leftist columns for WaPo, but even he disagrees with the administration over this.

 

 

 

Obama administration mistakes journalism for espionage

By Eugene Robinson

 

The Obama administration has no business rummaging through journalists’ phone records, perusing their e-mails and tracking their movements in an attempt to keep them from gathering news. This heavy-handed business isn’t chilling, it’s just plain cold.

 

It also may well be unconstitutional. In my reading, the First Amendment prohibition against “abridging the freedom . . . of the press” should rule out secretly obtaining two months’ worth of the personal and professional phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors, including calls to and from the main AP phone number at the House press gallery in the Capitol. Yet this is what the Justice Department did.

 

The unwarranted snooping, which was revealed last week, would be troubling enough if it were an isolated incident. But it is part of a pattern that threatens to redefine investigative reporting as criminal behavior.

 

The Post reported Monday that the Justice Department secretly obtained phone and e-mail records for Fox News reporter James Rosen, and that the FBI even tracked his movements in and out of the main State Department building. Rosen’s only apparent transgression? Doing what reporters are supposed to do, which is to dig out the news.

 

In both instances, prosecutors were trying to build criminal cases under the 1917 Espionage Act against federal employees suspected of leaking classified information. Before President Obama took office, the Espionage Act had been used to prosecute leakers a grand total of three times, including the 1971 case of Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. Obama’s Justice Department has used the act six times. And counting.

 

Obviously, the government has a duty to protect genuine secrets. But the problem is that every administration, without exception, tends to misuse the “top secret” stamp — sometimes from an overabundance of caution, sometimes to keep inconvenient or embarrassing information from coming to light.

 

 

 

http://www.washingto...6b44_story.html

Edited May 21, 2013 by B-Man

[B-Man]

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[Magox]

I wonder why so much is being made of the DoS security pass log. I mean--outside the need to throw raw meat to the salivating masses. The gmail intrusion seems to be the real issue.

 

There's a NYT editorial today justifying the AP wiretaps--good timing!

Yes, I could totally see the NyTimes defending the Bush's appointed DOJ for doing the same.

[OCinBuffalo]

Yes, I could totally see the NyTimes defending the Bush's appointed DOJ for doing the same.

That's why these stories just keep getting better.

 

Every .5 hour there's a "time to eat schit" moment for the left, Bush Derangement Syndrome "victims", and the like. They are all going to need whitening tooth paste with the amount of stool they've had to consume. I mean, at some point, you have to say "I'd rather not", right? At some point don't they have to say "I guess I was wrong, and that the problems I identified had little to do with Bush, and more to do with government"? Nope. There they sit, ready for another helping, grin and all.

 

All this moral superiority being washed away so easily, because it was entirely phony.

[PastaJoe]

There's a NYT editorial today justifying the AP wiretaps--good timing!

 

And a good explanation of how this is being blown out of proportion by the media, and shows the hypocrisy of Republicans who have complained that security leaks need to be more vigorously investigated.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/21/opinion/stop-the-leaks.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0

 

"At the time the article was published, there were strong bipartisan calls for the Justice Department to find the leaker. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. gave that assignment to Ronald C. Machen Jr., the United States attorney for the District of Columbia, who is known for his meticulous and dedicated work. Importantly, his assignment was to identify and prosecute the government official who leaked the sensitive information; it was not to conduct an inquiry into the news organization that published it.

 

His office, which has an experienced national security team, undertook a methodical and measured investigation. Did prosecutors immediately seek the reporters’ toll records? No. Did they subpoena the reporters to testify or compel them to turn over their notes? No. Rather, according to the Justice Department’s May 14 letter to The A.P., they first interviewed 550 people, presumably those who knew or might have known about the agent, and scoured the documentary record. But after eight months of intensive effort, it appears that they still could not identify the leaker.

 

It was only then — after pursuing “all reasonable alternative investigative steps,” as required by the department’s regulations — that investigators proposed obtaining telephone toll records (logs of calls made and received) for about 20 phone lines that the leaker might have used in conversations with A.P. journalists. They limited the request to the two months when the leak most likely occurred, and did not propose more intrusive investigative steps."