FLE

National Security Agency mounted massive spy op on Baltimore peace group, documents show

The National Security Agency has been spying on a Baltimore anti-war group, according to documents released during litigation, going so far as to document the inflating of protesters' balloons, and intended to deploy units trained to detect weapons of mass destruction. According to the documents, the Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore, a Quaker-linked peace group, has been monitored by the NSA working with the Baltimore Intelligence Unit of the Baltimore City Police Department. The documents came as a result of litigation in the August 2003 trial of Marilyn Carlisle and Cindy Farquhar. An NSA security official provided the defendants with a redacted Action Plan and a redacted copy of a Joint Terrorism Task Force email about the activities of the Pledge of Resistance activities. Documents turned over by the NSA indicate that the group was closely monitored. In one instance, the agency filed reports approximately every 15 minutes from 9:30 AM to 3:18 PM on the day of a demonstration at the National Vigilance Airplane Memorial on the NSA Campus in Maryland. According to an NSA email dated July 4, 2004, the agency collected license numbers and descriptions and the number of people in each car and filed a report about them gathering in a church parking lot for the demonstration. NSA agents also logged their travel to the demonstration, including stopping as a gas station along the way. A canine dog unit was used to search a minivan when it was stopped on the way to the demonstration - nothing was found. NSA officials even reported on the balloons being inflated for the demonstration and the content of their signs. An entry made at 1300 hours on July 4. reads, "The Soc. was advised the protestors were proceeding to the airplane memorial with three helium balloons attached to a banner that stated, 'Those Who Exchange Freedom for Security Deserve Neither, Will Ultimately Lose Both.'"....

Guantanamo war crimes tribunals resume

Exactly four years after the first prisoners arrived at the Guantanamo prison camp, a Yemeni accused of being a bodyguard for Osama bin Laden will face a U.S. military tribunal on Wednesday to demand the right to act as his own attorney on war crimes charges. A separate tribunal of U.S. military officers was scheduled to convene later on Wednesday in the murder case against Canadian prisoner Omar Khadr, 19. He is accused of killing an Army medic with a grenade during a firefight at a suspected al Qaeda compound in Afghanistan when he was just 15. The tribunals get under way amid criticism that they leave the defendants at a major disadvantage. The first tribunal will convene in a courtroom at the remote U.S. military base in Cuba to hear pretrial arguments in the case against Ali Hamza al Bahlul, who is accused of being a bin Laden bodyguard and al Qaeda videographer. The Pentagon is proceeding with the two cases even though U.S. courts have halted the trials of three other Guantanamo prisoners pending a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on whether Bush had authority to establish the tribunals. The high court will hear arguments in the case in March....

Probe Set In NSA Bugging

The National Security Agency's inspector general has opened an investigation into eavesdropping without warrants in the United States by the agency authorized by President Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to a letter released late yesterday. The Pentagon's acting inspector general, Thomas F. Gimble, wrote that his counterpart at the NSA "is already actively reviewing aspects of that program" and has "considerable expertise in the oversight of electronic surveillance," according to the letter sent to House Democrats who have requested official investigations of the NSA program. Gimble's letter appears to confirm that an internal investigation into the NSA's domestic eavesdropping program, authorized by Bush in a secret order revealed in recent weeks, is underway. The Justice Department has opened a separate criminal investigation into the leak of the highly classified program's existence. Officials in NSA Inspector General Joel Brenner's office could not be reached for comment last night. A group of 39 House Democrats wrote Gimble and other officials last month requesting investigations into the legality of the NSA program. Gimble responded that his office would decline to launch its own investigation because of the ongoing NSA probe....

Detainee Case Hits on Limits of Presidency

When the Supreme Court agreed two months ago to hear an appeal from a Yemeni detainee at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, named Salim Ahmed Hamdan, it was evident that an important test of the limits of presidential authority to conduct the war on terror was under way. Now that the final briefs have begun to arrive at the court, in advance of a late March argument, the dimensions of that test appear greater than ever. Several of the two dozen briefs filed on Mr. Hamdan's behalf late Friday address an issue that was not even part of the case when the justices granted review on Nov. 7: whether the court has jurisdiction to proceed or whether Congress, in a measure that President Bush supported and signed into law on Dec. 30, has succeeded in shutting the federal courthouse doors on Mr. Hamdan and 150 other Guantánamo detainees whose cases are pending at various levels of the federal court system. If that proved to be the case, the result would be "a nightmare scenario," a group of prominent law professors told the Supreme Court in one of the briefs. "The keys to the courthouse will be placed in the exclusive control of the executive," the brief says, creating "the legal equivalent of incommunicado detention of Japanese aliens in a relocation camp in Idaho." The professors were Burt Neuborne and Norman Dorsen of New York University, Judith Resnik of Yale, and Frank Michelman and David Shapiro of Harvard. Another brief, filed by the Center for National Security Studies, a civil liberties group, and the Constitution Project, a bipartisan study group, asserts flatly that if the new law, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, does in fact strip the Supreme Court of jurisdiction over the Hamdan case, then the law is unconstitutional. The Bush administration has not yet responded to such assertions; its brief is not due until early next month. But it appears both from the president's statement upon signing the measure, which originated as Section 1005 of a military spending bill, and from motions the administration has filed in the lower courts that government lawyers do take the view that the new law applies to pending cases and that the justices must dismiss the Hamdan appeal....

Expanding presidential powers

As Congress begins to look into the president's authorization of the NationalSecurity Agency's warrantless searches of e-mails and phone calls into -- and out of -- the United States, a question many Americans are asking was posed to the president at a Dec. 19 press conference by Peter Baker of The Washington Post: "If the global war on terrorism is to last for decades... does that mean we're going to see... a more or less permanent expansion of the unchecked power of the executive branch in American society?" The president had no direct answer, but he did say it was "shameful" of the New York Times to break this story. However, the more we know about the porous nature of the president's defense of his authorization of the NSA's bypassing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court, it's becoming clearer that the New York Times should not have held the story for a year at the Bush administration's request. As the business publication Barron's Financial Weekly put it on its Dec. 26 front page: "The pursuit of terrorism does not authorize the president to make up new laws." And in the Dec. 21 Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Bruce Schneier, chief technology officer of Counterpane Internet Security, cut to the core of why disclosure has led to the resignation, in protest, of federal District Judge James Robertson, a member of the FISA court, and why others on that secret court are concerned about the president's action. "This is not a partisan issue between Democrats and Republicans," Mr. Schneier writes, "it's a president unilaterally overriding the Fourth Amendment, Congress and the Supreme Court. Unchecked presidential power has nothing to do with how much you either love or hate George W. Bush. You have to imagine this power in the hands of the person you most don't want to see as president, whether it be Dick Cheney or Hillary Rodham Clinton."....

Gun Owners of America E-Mail Alert

8001 Forbes Place, Suite 102, Springfield, VA 22151
Phone: 703-321-8585 / FAX: 703-321-8408
http://www.gunowners.org

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

You told Congress you didn't want the BATFE, FBI and other federal
agencies to go on fishing expeditions through your gun records. It
appears that Congress may actually be listening!

By a vote of 52-47, the Senate failed to shut down the
liberal/conservative filibuster of H.R. 3199 -- including a provision
which would allow BATFE to goosestep through your gun records
(4473's, etc.) WITHOUT THE APPROVAL OF ANY COURT. Under the Senate
rules, 60 votes would have been needed to end the filibuster on this
PATRIOT Act reauthorization.

Instead, this so-called "terrorism" legislation -- some of which is
relatively non-controversial -- was extended until February 3 in
order to allow negotiations to continue.

You might remember that 16 provisions of the PATRIOT Act were set to
expire on New Year's Day. To prevent this, Congress extended the
deadline for five weeks, into early February. Even if these 16
provisions expire, the underlying PATRIOT Act will still remain in
force. GOA is second to none in its desire to protect this nation's
security and prevent terrorists from attacking American citizens.

But we believe the best way to do this is to abide by the
Constitution. Freedom works. The Second Amendment works. Guns in
the hands of airline pilots on 9-11 would have prevented the
terrorist hijackings that day. Restricting liberty only makes us
less safe... and letting the BATFE and other federal agencies to
conduct unlimited warrantless searches of firearms purchase records
is not going to make us safer.

Now, there've been some interesting developments over the last couple
of days.

At least one Senate office has suggested that negotiators may be
willing to "deal" in order to completely exempt 4473's and
other gun records from federal agents' warrantless search powers. Under this
deal -- which would be total victory for gun owners -- the provisions
of the pro-gun McClure-Volkmer Firearms Owners Protection Act would
govern what gun records BATFE can and can't see.

We will continue working to exempt gun records from the "snooping"
provisions of H.R. 3199. But we're asking you to strengthen our hand
by continuing to pressure Congress. Since Gun Owners of America is
fighting a lonely battle to exempt gun records from the clause of the
PATRIOT Act, your activism is crucial. While you might want to ask
the other groups what they're doing to fight these provisions, we
definitely need you to contact the Congress right now.

ACTION: Please write your senators. Urge them to insist that
pro-gun language be inserted into H.R. 3199 which ensures that BATFE
is prohibited from conducting unlimited warrantless searches of
firearms purchase records. The vote on this legislation will take
place in less than one month. Negotiations on this bill are
occurring right now. It's imperative that you contact your Senators
right away!

You can visit the Gun Owners Legislative Action Center at
http://www.gunowners.org/activism.htm to send your Senators a
pre-written e-mail message such as the one below.

Or, you can call your Senators toll-free at 877-762-8762.