Clearly, the Justice Department has nothing to hide. After an hour of stirring talk from witnesses about the need for checks and balances, executive branch transparency and the miscalculations of inherent power that led to the American Revolution, Justice lawyer Steven Bradbury had precious little to say when Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-New York) asked him to provide the legal opinions the Bush administration relied on when unleashing a secret warrantless NSA surveillance program that ended up spying on American citizens:
"No."
Bradbury said the documents are confidential and suggested that if the committee were to try to get at them, executive privilege might get in the way. Of course, the president, who Bradbury said re-authorized the
NSA program every 45 days for almost six years, would have to erect that hurdle himself.
"So you're saying you won't give to Congress the requested documents because they assert an executive privilege that you haven't asserted?"
asked an incredulous Nadler.
Yes.
The first House oversight hearing on the NSA's warrantless Terrorist
Surveillance Program went pretty much the same way: Legal heads railing about how the White House has circumvented both the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Fourth Amendment, and administration mouthpieces obfuscating with disturbing ease.
Jameel Jaffer, an ACLU lawyer who represents a coalition of criminal defense attorneys, journalists, and scholars that had formally challenged the legality of the NSA program (last year, a federal court in Michigan agreed with the ACLU that the program was illegal; the Bush administration has appealed the decision.), urged Congress to issue subpoenas to learn more about the executive branch's legal justifications, the involvement of telecoms and what secret surveillance activities are going on today.
But Nadler's opening remarks may have best captured the spirit of a hearing in which the specter of arsenic-mad King George III was invoked:
