Reply #14: Scott Horton just gave this a real scorching damnification. Bush a tyrant, ..tyranny...

[L. Coyote]

The Justice Department’s On-Going ‘State Secrets’ Charade
Scott Horton - Dec 2, 2007 - http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/12/hbc-90001814

When is information a “state secret” and thus completely exempt from disclosure in legal process, even if its exclusion will produce a manifest injustice? In previous episodes, we have gotten an array of different answers. For instance, we learned that when the Government engages in criminal violations of the FISA statute conspiring with telecommunications companies in the process, with the result that the communications of American citizens are subject to unlawful warrantless surveillance—this is a “state secret.” And likewise, when the Government picks up an innocent man, wrongfully confines him and deprives him of access to counsel and due process, then transports him overseas for the purposes of having him tortured—again a series of criminal acts—this is also a “state secret.” And today we get yet a further installment in what the Bush Justice Department considers to be a “state secret.” It appears that when a convicted felon at the heart of what Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann have labeled the “biggest corruption scandal in American history” pays hundreds of visits to the White House, meeting with the President, the Vice President, and the President’s senior political advisor, and potentially involving them directly or indirectly in his criminal schemes, this, too, is a “state secret” and thus cannot be divulged.

I think we’re detecting a pattern here. “State secrets” it seems has nothing to do with signals intelligence, military planning or armaments—the things traditionally associated with state secrets. No, when the Bush Justice Department uses the term, it means something else: it refers to information which, if disclosed, would be politically embarrassing to the Republican Party, and as to which no other privilege is available. The “state secrets” privilege has literally emerged as the Bush Administration’s new get-out-of-jail-free card.

The AP’s Pete Yost reports:

The Bush Administration is laying out a new secrecy defense in an effort to end a court battle about the White House visits of now-imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff. .....

.....

White House responses to inquiries up to this point have furnished specific evidence of intentional evasion–what in other circumstances (as for instance when it is enforcing rather than subverting the law) the Justice Department would call “obstruction of justice.” For instance, Vice President Cheney gave specific guidance to the Secret Service to destroy records of visits to his office and to stop the practice of recording future visits. President Bush made a number of statements refusing to give a specific account of his meetings with Abramoff, which reportedly have been frequent.

.... MUST READ ....

From: President Bush and Jack Abramoff meetings " reportedly have been frequent"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2392986