Calling Kafka

[Lanya]

Secrecy Is at Issue in Suits Opposing Spy Program
[......................]

That document indicated, according to court filings, that the government monitored communications between officers of the charity and two of its lawyers without a warrant in spring 2004.

“If I gave you this document today and you put it on the front page of The New York Times, it would not threaten national security,” Mr. Eisenberg, a lawyer for the foundation, said. “There is only one thing about it that’s explosive, and that’s the fact that our clients were wiretapped.”

Ms. Bernabei circulated the document to two directors of the charity, at least one of them in Saudi Arabia, and to three other lawyers. She discussed them with two more lawyers. A reporter for The Washington Post, David B. Ottaway, also reviewed the document.

The full significance of the document was apparently not clear to any recipient, more than a year before The New York Times disclosed the existence of the N.S.A. program in December 2005.

The F.B.I. learned of the disclosure almost immediately in August 2004, Judge King said at a court hearing last year, but made no effort to retrieve copies of the document for about six weeks.

When it did, everyone it asked apparently returned all copies of the document. In a statement reported in The Post in March, for instance, Mr. Ottaway said he the F.B.I. had told him that the document had “highly sensitive national security information.”

“I returned it after consulting with Washington Post editors and lawyers, and concluding that it was not relevant to what I was working on at the time,” Mr. Ottaway said.

In a sworn statement in June, a lawyer who had the document, Asim Ghafoor, said the bureau took custody of his laptop computer “in order that the document might be ‘scrubbed’ from it.”

The computer was returned weeks later.

In February 2006, the charity and the two lawyers who say they were wiretapped sued to stop the program, requesting financial damages. They attached a copy of the classified document, filing it under seal. They have not said how they came to have a copy.

Three weeks later, the lawyers for the foundation received a call from two Justice Department lawyers. The classified document “had not been properly secured,” the lawyers said, according to a letter from the plaintiffs’ lawyers to the judge.

As Mr. Eisenberg recalled it, the government lawyers said, “The F.B.I. is on its way to the courthouse to take possession of the document from the judge.”

But Judge King, at a hurriedly convened hearing, would not yield it, and asked, “What if I say I will not deliver it to the F.B.I.?”

A Justice Department lawyer, Anthony J. Coppolino, gave a measured response, saying: “Your Honor, we obviously don’t want to have any kind of a confrontation with you. But it has to be secured in a proper fashion.”

The document was ultimately deposited in a “secure compartmented information facility” at the bureau office in Portland.

In the meantime, copies of the document appear to have been sent abroad, and the government concedes that it has made no efforts to contact people overseas who it suspects have them.

“It’s probably gone many, many places,” Judge King said of the document at the August hearing. “Who is it secret from?”

A Justice Department lawyer, Andrew H. Tannenbaum, replied, “It’s secret from anyone who has not seen it.”

He added, “The document must be completely removed from the case, and plaintiffs are not allowed to rely on it to prove their claims.”

Judge King wondered aloud about the implications of that position, saying, “There is nothing in the law that requires them to purge their memory.”

Mr. Eisenberg, in an interview, said that was precisely the government position. “They claim they own the portions of our brains that remember anything,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/26/washington/26nsa.html?pagewanted=2&_r=5&adxnnl=0&adxnnlx=1169925498-0V669o/XxkxSvtkr8AhSVw

[Michael Tee]

<<A Justice Department lawyer, Andrew H. Tannenbaum, replied, “It’s secret from anyone who has not seen it.”>>

I blame only the American sheeple.  They have got themselves EXACTLY the kind of government and the kind of DOJ that they deserve.  And of course, the judge - - who should grow himself a pair of balls - - is not entirely blame-free in this little farce either.

Hey - - maybe the plaintiffs should appeal this one:  all the way to the Supreme Court.   BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH.

[BT]

The Charity in question is :

Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation is a defunct Islamic charity front for Al Qaeda.

The foundation's assets were frozen on March 11, 2002.

On January 29th, 2004 the foundation was added to the United Nations list of groups whose assets are to be blocked due to suspected ties to Osama bin Laden or his al-Qaida network. Russia banned the organisation in 2006

[Michael Tee]

You KNOW that's a bad charity when even the Russians have banned them.  In that case, why should the plaintiffs have their rights determined by a court of law based on all the relevant evidence available?  YOU know they've got no claim, I know they've got no claim, so what do they need a judge and court for anyway?  I say, fuck'em.

[BT]

The story and the post wasn't about their claims nor their rights. It was a simple Bush is evil story.
You notice how vague the excerp was? For all we would know the charity in question was habitat for humanity.

I'm used to the MSM and the blogger from which Lanya lifted this story thinking those on the right are stupid, i am surprised that those on the left have no problem being treated as idiots also.