 |
 |
 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
 |
|||
|
|||
 |
|||
|
|||
 |
|||
|
Neocon Memo Says Fourth Amendment Does Not Apply To Military Operations Within U.S.
- Text size
ACLU
April 3, 2008
ACLU Calls For Immediate Release Of Withheld Legal Memo
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (212) 519-7829 or (646) 785-1894; media@aclu.org
NEW YORK – A newly disclosed secret memo authored by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in March 2003 that asserts President Bush has unlimited power to order brutal interrogations of detainees also reveals a radical interpretation of the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable search and seizure. The memo, declassified yesterday as the result of an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit, cites a still-secret DOJ memo from 2001 that found that the “Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations.”
The October 2001 memo was almost certainly meant to provide a legal basis for the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program, which President Bush launched the same month the memo was issued. As a component of the Department of Defense, the NSA is a military agency.
“The recent disclosures underscore the Bush administration’s extraordinarily sweeping conception of executive power,” said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU’s National Security Project. “The administration’s lawyers believe the president should be permitted to violate statutory law, to violate international treaties, and even to violate the Fourth Amendment inside the U.S. They believe that the president should be above the law.”
The Bush administration has never argued publicly that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to military operations within the nation’s borders. The memo released yesterday publicizes this argument for the first time.
The ACLU has been aware of the Justice Department’s October 2001 memo since last year, but until now, its contents were unknown. The Justice Department informed the ACLU of the memo’s existence as a result of a FOIA lawsuit seeking information concerning the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program. The Justice Department acknowledged the existence of “a 37-page memorandum, dated October 23, 2001, from a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in OLC, and a Special Counsel, OLC, to the Counsel to the President, prepared in response to a request from the White House for OLC’s views concerning the legality of potential responses to terrorist activity.” Until now, however, almost nothing was known about the memo’s contents – except that it was related to a request for information about the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program. The ACLU has challenged the withholding of the October 2001 memo and the issue is pending before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
The memo released to the ACLU yesterday cites the October 2001 memo but takes its argument even further. Relying on the earlier memo, the March 2003 memo argues that the president has authority as Commander-in-Chief to bypass not only the Fourth Amendment but the central due process guarantee of the Fifth Amendment as well.
“This memo makes a mockery of the Constitution and the rule of law,” said Amrit Singh, a staff attorney with the ACLU. “That it was issued by the Justice Department, whose job it is to uphold the law, makes it even more unconscionable.”
The March 2003 memo was declassified in response to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU, the New York Civil Liberties Union, and other organizations in June 2004 to enforce Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for records concerning the treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody abroad. The ACLU has been fighting for the release of the March 2003 Yoo memo since filing the lawsuit. A few weeks ago, after the court ordered additional briefing on whether the Defense Department could continue to withhold the memo, the government reluctantly agreed to conduct a declassification review by March 31. The Defense Department released this memo after conducting the review.
The 2003 Department of Justice memo can be found online at:
www.aclu.org/safefree/torture/34745res20030314.html
Documents relating to the ACLU’s NSA FOIA lawsuit are available online at:
www.aclu.org/safefree/nsaspying/30022res20060207.html
To date, more than 100,000 pages of government documents have been released in response to the ACLU’s FOIA lawsuit related the abuse of prisoner in U.S. custody abroad. These documents are available online at: www.aclu.org/torturefoia
-
- Social bookmarks
- Email this article
-
- Print this page
- Share on Twitter
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:03 am
All I can say right now is, “this makes me SICK!”
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:11 am
We must realize that the destruction of the American Constitution is implicitly to destroy our U.S. Federal and State governments to live Americans helpless under Bush W legislated non-laws, the Military Commissions Act, and that criminality with intent, a terrorist act, acknowledging that no country declared war on Americans or committed misdeeds against this United States, destroys our U.S. militaries paid to protect and to defend Americans, our country and our governments, into marauders and bands of criminals who think that to destroy their own people is to justify their stolen U.S. tax dollar payrolls for their job security!
THIS INSANITY HAS TO END NOW OR WE AMERICANS ARE GOING TO BE DEGRADED AND DEHUMANIZED INTO A LEVEL OF MONKEY-THINKING HUMAN DEPRAVITY THAT CAN NOT BE CONDONED IN AN AMERICAN REPUBLIC! -Al Koppel.
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:13 am
Who died and gave the government the power to interpret the constitution.
Of course a power-hungry money-grabbing oil-resource-grabbing constitution-hating illegal-war-mongering central-bank-owned government is going to say that the 4th amendment doesn’t apply to them increasing their power, money and resources even to the extent of unleashing the military to take over the country.
My interpretation of the 4th amendment is it applies in all cases. NO EXCEPTIONS !!
No doubt 299,000,000 Americans would agree with me.
Government is like a pit-bull. They need a muzzle and need to know who is the master ie. we the people. They need to be put on a tight leash, placed on a strict diet and placed in the dog house where they belong. Otherwise, they will become a bloated self-important bureacracy gobbling up your kids and going for your throat.
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:31 am
SAVE A COPY OF THE DOC FOR THE PHILADELPHIA TRIALS ( NUREMBURG)
April 3rd, 2008 at 10:50 am
What alot of people do not understand is that G.W. did not start this. It started in 1933 with President Rooselvelt, with the 1933 rewrite of the emergency war powers act that declared all of us enemys of the U.S. goverment. The 1933 rewrite of the emergency war powers act gave the president of the U.S. Direct control of all communications (by mail or radio) all transportation, and commerce.
This act was made to give the president more direct control of the goverment in case of an emergency. This emergency condition was been in effect ever sense has given the President UNConstitional powers to create an undergoverment with powers to make laws or as they call them codes to remove our LIBERTY, and make us all slaves. Remember 1933 was year Rooselvelt made private ownership of gold against the law. G.W didn’t start this but he is damn sure is putting a finish to it
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:25 am
More government stupid, idiot, coward, dummed down, brainless, criminals hard at work walking all over thier own rights. How much more stupid and bigger crimanals can government employees get, and or become. We need a real court to start prosecuting these idiots. The Constitution is NOT to be determined and or defined by any government including the sup court! Wake up Jury people use your power, soveriegnty, especially you Grand Jurors, arrest these crimanals!!! Now!!!
April 3rd, 2008 at 11:39 am
The Supreme Court has smacked the gov. down on this before. The government has used “civilians” and CPS workers to try to circumvent the 4th. Now they are trying to use the military. These peolple sit around all day getting paid tax dollars to try to figure out how to screw Amerika.
Jason
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Just a thought, does anyone ever take a step back and realize how incredible this all is? Everything we know? It’s like the movie the matrix, except there’s no physically different dimension that we find ourselves in, once we know the truth. Instead, we find ourselves right in the middle of things, but based on our perception of the world, we might as well be in another dimension. It’s something you never imagined until you realize how real it is.
And all this stepping back and thinking reminded me of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_cave
If you haven’t read it, you should.
Allegory of the cave – the Greek philosopher Plato
Imagine prisoners, who have been chained since their childhood deep inside a cave: not only are their limbs immobilized by the chains; their heads are chained in one direction as well so that their gaze is fixed on a wall.
Behind the prisoners is an enormous fire, and between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway, along which puppets of various animals, plants, and other things are moved along. The puppets cast shadows on the wall, and the prisoners watch these shadows. When one of the puppet-carriers speaks, an echo against the wall causes the prisoners to believe that the words come from the shadows.
The prisoners engage in what appears to us to be a game: naming the shapes as they come by. This, however, is the only reality that they know, even though they are seeing merely shadows of objects. They are thus conditioned to judge the quality of one another by their skill in quickly naming the shapes and dislike those who play poorly.
Suppose a prisoner is released and compelled to stand up and turn around. At that moment his eyes will be blinded by the sunlight coming into the cave from its entrance, and the shapes passing by will appear less real than their shadows.
The last object he would be able to see is the sun, which, in time, he would learn to see as the object that provides the seasons and the courses of the year, presides over all things in the visible region, and is in some way the cause of all these things that he has seen.
Once enlightened, so to speak, the freed prisoner would not want to return to the cave to free “his fellow bondsmen,” but would be compelled to do so. Another problem lies in the other prisoners not wanting to be freed: descending back into the cave would require that the freed prisoner’s eyes adjust again, and for a time, he would be one of the ones identifying shapes on the wall. His eyes would be swamped by the darkness, and would take time to become acclimated. Therefore, he would not be able to identify the shapes on the wall as well as the other prisoners, making it seem as if his being taken to the surface completely ruined his eyesight.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Watching Money Masters for the umpteenth time last night, it fully dawned on me that very one of us was born into slavery. We are all slaves. Add up the IRS, sales tax, excise taxes, property taxes, sin taxes, the excise in gas, fuel and food, services, and everything and you have no money to save. You must get up and go to work for half the year just to pay for things they created for you to pay. You may not use any money but theirs. You may not have your SS# erased from the record. We are numbered like animals, oxen, and forced to produce wealth and power and hand it over to them. Add it all up, leaving nothing out, and tell me (i’m no accountant), and let me know if I am right: We spend the first 5 months of the year working for THEM! January, February, March, April, May, you are their property. Then the holidays come and any kind of savings we may have are spent, taxed, and we start out the next year, expected to do it again! If they are, conservatively, taking a third of everything we make (it’s more), then that means 0-20 we are being conditioned, 20- 55 we are working for them, and 55-70 we had better save up for retirement (impossible now). That means they own the best years of our lives, and leave us a short childhood, and a very humble old age for us to look back on what we have accomplished. The taxation does not end once you retire either. We must mercilessly persue the destruction of the central banks, and abolish forever the use of fractional banking. They made possible the headline at the top of this page. If politicians are rewarded for treason, and assassinated for patriotism. All the work of these bankers!
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:36 pm
The Big wheels of Wasington–Whoever they may be–Will be the only People in the USA-That will survive-If ever there is an All out national emergency==Just wait & see-All the USA Army bases that were closed up==What were they goimg to do with them==They are now all bases –Or secuity zones–no un military personel allowed near them–Thay are Camps For the time when this country is taken completely-by Controled puppet government–The USA government-Will say something different==Who can beleive a Government that LIES& LIES-everyday to us!!Who is Benefiting inthe usa -Now–All Non Born immigrents-!!Naturalized Born Citizens -What are they–Nothing!!=Just Fools Paying Taxes & more taxes!!
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Mike in Austin, you are 100% correct sir. That is called becoming “enlightened”. We were born into the indoctrination, so most folks will never wake up. Those who do sometimes take many years to get there. Others are aesthetics and thinkers, whether formally or informally educated. It always makes you angry when it first dawns on you what is REALLY happening. Yes, day after day and year after year you are working for someone else. You are thrown crumbs however, most of them in the form of opiates of one kind or another. Anything to throw enough endorphins through your bloodstream and keep you satiated.
God bless you for clear thinking. Many are just waking up. If they follow the money and really pay attention to where it leads, they will land on the culprits.
April 3rd, 2008 at 12:51 pm
What’s next? The Supreme Scum’s are reveiwing the 2nd Amendment right now. This will probably be taken from us as well. You know, the ACLU did a good job at this, but these people are part of the problem in America. They do not believe in free speech for all people! I have watched them look for litigation to restrict free speech rights of Christians. This is wrong! I will commend them for uncovering this plot against our citizens though. They need to defend everyone’s right, not just who they think should have rights!
April 3rd, 2008 at 3:31 pm
That memo was a blatant act of treason against the American people; the scumbags who wrote it need to be waterboarded and then extraordinarily renditioned to the third world meat-packing resort of their choice.
April 3rd, 2008 at 4:23 pm
The government is out of line on this one, they have taken over the peoples country and are claiming it for themselves now I guess.
NOBODY should vote at all in their staged election.
The people voting is their way of forcing us to accept their rules of tyranny and control.
Maybe its time to ignore the government,
We’re in a lot of trouble folks when its announced they decided the 4th amendment doesnt apply anymore cuz of terrorism and nobody says a word except the ACLU.
The media isnt talking about it with any real concern, 75% of the population probably wont even know this is happening or happened a year from now.
Ignored, violated, tasored and enslaved and nothing is really being said about it, thats just the way it is now.
The gov stole from us now, any they dont even care and the media doesnt care either.
April 3rd, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Can we say this officially proves the president a dictator now?
He is making up all the rules, keeping them secret and doing whatever the hell he wants and nobody can or is or dares to stop him. Its happily accepted and the mainstream media reporters smile and laugh and talk about how nice the weather is in AZ right now and the up coming picnics going on this weekend and its all just great to be alive in America.
Its a bunch of bullshit.
April 3rd, 2008 at 4:31 pm
Shortwave Wars!!!
April 3rd, 2008 at 4:34 pm
What do we do now?
Complain, cry and bitch about it as their agenda goes forward???????
Stand by and allow the supreme court to say the president is right and too bad civilians the military has machine guns and we all better shut out already.
????????
We’re gone, this is the final proof as the neocons all snicker and think they are with the elites on this too.
Our freedom is officially over now.
Its admitted and we do nothing about it but wait until they come for us.
What else is there to do?
April 3rd, 2008 at 4:56 pm
http://www.freerepublic.com/fo.....5044/posts
“Shortwave Wars”
William Cooper
April 3rd, 2008 at 8:08 pm
I can see the Rapture coming very shortly and you all better be ready.
April 3rd, 2008 at 8:15 pm
Josh Taylor– The great Tribulation comes first. Are you ready for that? “This calls for great patience on the part of the saints…”
April 3rd, 2008 at 8:46 pm
i heard on the news that someone sprinkled flour in an envelope and mailed it to a military base(a powder substance like flour creates an anthrax scare, apparantly?)
anyways did anybody hear about this?
April 3rd, 2008 at 8:51 pm
21
ANARCHYisKING Says:
===============================================================
But a military base sent real anthrax and killed like five people. Maybe it was a delayed gift for invading Iraq. They just didn’t know Flour from Flower. That’s what they wanted, right?
April 4th, 2008 at 10:12 am
no, but Posse Comitatus does traitors
April 4th, 2008 at 10:13 am
21
ANARCHYisKING Says:
April 3rd, 2008 at 8:46 pm
i heard on the news that someone sprinkled flour in an envelope and mailed it to a military base(a powder substance like flour creates an anthrax scare, apparantly?)
anyways did anybody hear about this?
USE POWDER FROM AN ABC FIRE EXTINGUISHER
IT’S YELLOW AND LOOKS JUST LIKE IT
MONOMONIUM PHOSPHATE
April 5th, 2008 at 6:45 am
Alexander Solzhenitsyn on torture in Soviet Russia: “…what normal Russian at the beginning of the [20th] century…could have believed, would have tolerated, such a slander [that torture would be practiced in Russia] against the bright future? …what had already been regarded as barbarism under Peter the Great [died in 1725] …what had already become totally impossible under Catherine the Great [died 1796], was all being practiced during the flowering of the glorious twentieth century–in a society based on socialist principles, and at a time when airplanes were flying and the radio and talking films had already appeared–not by one scoundrel alone in one secret place only, but by tens of thousands of specially trained beasts standing over millions of defenseless victims.” (THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO, p.94)
April 5th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
In the abscence of hope, hatred may fourish without the slightest worry of counter action. The enemies of freedom count on this principle.
Small and largely harmless actions, supportive of hope and in the same vein as those of your forefathers, are the order of the day. It will be interesting to see how inventive you get and how large an audience you end up finding.
If you think you are alone in this undertaking, England and France have both had recent ‘enabling acts’ imposed on them…and more countries will have them soon enough.
The old ways are still the best…hiding largess well out of their reach, establishing your own legal forms outside of the corrupted ones, actually communicating and establishing communication outside of their controls…the list is daunting, but doable.
Although formal war has already been declared against you, you do not have to descend to their levels to prevail.
Also…Forget the evangelicals…they were compromised by their own pastors long ago. ‘Give up, for the revelation is at hand.’……sad and laughable.
April 5th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
We all know what we know. We’ve shared the facts. It is well past time we acted. Congress is too frightened to impeach Bush/Cheney. They fear such action will push Bush over the edge and he’ll start the active military phase of WWlll, with Cheney’s prodding. I’m up for a revolution and not afraid to say so. We must uphold the Constitution or we are no longer a democracy. I’d say we are not one now. We live in a fascist police state and Bush/Cheney are co-dictators. Many US citizens do not know what is going on. Some do and have given up and/or don’t care. “Nations rise and nations fall, so what?” I have children and do not want them to suffer under authoritarianism. I have had a minor taste of it in my travels and no thank you. ( Just think about the histories of Italy, Germany, Russia, etc..) I will fight for the continuation of the democratic experiment in America. Voting is not the answer, right? Ha. Both parties are corrupt. This is a plutocracy. So what do you all suggest as time is a-wastin’. How do we stop the mad men before it is too, too late?