November 12, 2013 5:33 PM EST — Friends,
family, colleagues and dignitaries gathered in Los Angeles for a
memorial service honoring Gerardo Hernandez, the first TSA officer to
die in the line of duty. He was killed November first when a man opened
fire at LAX. (AP)
Suggested letter to officials about the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency's misuse of National Security Agency information- such was what was apparently used against me to subvert the 1st Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech in 2006 with the Commonwealth of Virginia's ilegal search, seizure and arrest of me in August 2006.
I urge you to call for hearings on the Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) and U.S. drug policy. According to a recent Reuters
investigation, the DEA is collaborating with the National Security
Agency (NSA), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and other agencies to
spy on American citizens in the name of the war on drugs. Moreover, the
DEA is actively urging local, state and federal law enforcement
officers to create fake investigative trails to disguise where the
information originated, a scheme that prosecutors, defense attorneys,
judges and others argue robs Americans of their right to a fair trial.
Hundreds or thousands of cases could be affected.
Jonathan Turley, USATODAY11:20 a.m. EDT May 29, 2013
Top lawyer doesn't have credibility to investigate anyone, let alone himself.
Recently, Attorney General Eric Holder appeared before the House
Judiciary Committee to answer questions about the administration's
sweeping surveillance of journalists with the Associated Press. In the
greatest attack on the free press in decades, the Justice Department
seized phone records for reporters and editors in at least three AP offices
as well as its office in the House of Representatives. Holder, however,
proceeded to claim absolute and blissful ignorance of the
investigation, even failing to recall when or how he recused himself.
Yet, this was only the latest attack on the news media under Holder's leadership. Despite his record, he expressed surprise
at the hearing that the head of the Republican National Committee had
called for his resignation. After all, Holder pointed out, he did
nothing. That is, of course, precisely the point. Unlike the head of the
RNC, I am neither a Republican nor conservative, and I believe Holder
should be fired.
The 'sin eater'
Holder's refusal to
accept responsibility for the AP investigation was something of a change
for the political insider. His value to President Obama has been his
absolute loyalty. Holder is what we call a "sin eater" inside the
Beltway — high-ranking associates who shield presidents from
responsibility for their actions. Richard Nixon had H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman. Ronald Reagan had Oliver North and Robert "Bud" McFarlane. George W. Bush had the ultimate sin eater: Dick Cheney, who seemed to have an insatiable appetite for sins to eat.
This role can be traced to 18th century Europe,
when families would use a sin eater to clean the moral record of a
dying person by eating bread from the person's chest and drinking ale
passed over his body. Back then, the ritual's power was confined to
removing minor sins.
For Obama, there has been no better sin eater than Holder. When the president promised CIA employees early in his first term that they would not be investigated for torture, it was the attorney general who shielded officials from prosecution. When the Obama administration decided it would expand secret and warrantless surveillance, it was Holder who justified it.
When the president wanted the authority to kill any American he deemed a
threat without charge or trial, it was Holder who went public to announce the "kill list" policy.
Last week, the Justice Department confirmed that it was Holder who personally approved the equally abusive search of Fox News
correspondent James Rosen's e-mail and phone records in another story
involving leaked classified information. In the 2010 application for a
secret warrant, the Obama administration named Rosen as "an aider and
abettor and/or co-conspirator" to the leaking of classified materials.
The Justice Department even investigated Rosen's parents' telephone number, and Holder was there to justify every attack on the news media.
Ignoble legacy
Yet, at this month's hearing, the attorney general had had his fill. Accordingly, Holder adopted an embarrassing mantra
of "I have no knowledge" and "I had no involvement" throughout the
questioning. When he was not reciting the equivalent to his name, rank
and serial number, he was implicating his aide, Deputy Attorney General
James Cole. Cole, it appears, is Holder's sin eater. Holder was so busy
denying responsibility for today's scandals, he began denying known facts about older scandals, such as the "Fast and Furious" gun operation.
In
the end, Holder was the best witness against his continuing in office.
His insistence that he did nothing was a telling moment. The attorney
general has done little in his tenure to protect civil liberties or the
free press. Rather, Holder has supervised a comprehensive erosion of
privacy rights, press freedom and due process. This ignoble legacy was
made possible by Democrats who would look at their shoes whenever the
Obama administration was accused of constitutional abuses.
On
Thursday, Obama responded to the outcry over the AP and Fox scandals by
calling for an investigation by ... you guessed it ... Eric Holder.
He ordered Holder to meet with news media representatives to hear their
"concerns" and report back to him. He sent his old sin eater for a
confab with the very targets of the abusive surveillance. Such an
inquiry offers no reason to trust its conclusions.
The feeble
response was the ultimate proof that these are Obama's sins despite his
effort to feign ignorance. It did not matter that Holder is the sin
eater who has lost his stomach or that such mortal sins are not so
easily digested. Indeed, these sins should be fatal for any attorney
general.
Jonathan Turley, the Shapiro Professor of Public
Interest Law at George Washington University, is a member of USA TODAY's
Board of Contributors.
In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes diverse opinions from outside writers, including our Board of Contributors.
IRS politically motivated special attention ... the premise of this blog "Free Speech Beneath U.S. Homeland Security" of unlawful surveillance in violation of the 4th amendment to subvert the 1st amendment ... is now ADMITTED
An Iraq War veteran who joined the U.S. Army two days after 9/11 has written a powerful open letter
to former President George W. Bush and ex-Vice President Dick Cheney
accusing them of war crimes, "plunder" and "the murder of thousands of
young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole."
Tomas Young, who was shot and
paralyzed during an insurgent attack in Sadr City in 2004, five days
into his first deployment, penned the letter from his Kansas City, Mo.,
home, where he's under hospice care.
"I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney," Young wrote in the letter published on Truthdig.com.
"I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral
consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power.
I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it
clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along
with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions
more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you
have done. You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of
egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the
murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future
you stole."
The 33-year-old, who was the subject of Phil Donahue's 2007 documentary "Body of War," continued:
I joined the Army two days after the 9/11 attacks. I
joined the Army because our country had been attacked. I wanted to
strike back at those who had killed some 3,000 of my fellow citizens. I
did not join the Army to go to Iraq, a country that had no part in the
September 2001 attacks and did not pose a threat to its neighbors, much
less to the United States. I did not join the Army to “liberate” Iraqis
or to shut down mythical weapons-of-mass-destruction facilities or to
implant what you cynically called “democracy” in Baghdad and the Middle
East. I did not join the Army to rebuild Iraq, which at the time you
told us could be paid for by Iraq’s oil revenues.
Young believes he was injured fighting the wrong war:
I would not be writing this letter if I had been wounded
fighting in Afghanistan against those forces that carried out the
attacks of 9/11. Had I been wounded there I would still be miserable
because of my physical deterioration and imminent death, but I would at
least have the comfort of knowing that my injuries were a consequence of
my own decision to defend the country I love. I would not have to lie
in my bed, my body filled with painkillers, my life ebbing away, and
deal with the fact that hundreds of thousands of human beings, including
children, including myself, were sacrificed by you for little more than
the greed of oil companies, for your alliance with the oil sheiks in
Saudi Arabia, and your insane visions of empire.
"When Tomas Young saw President Bush on television speaking from the ruins of the Twin Towers, his life changed," his bio on the "Body of War" website
reads. "As his basic training began at Ft. Hood, he assumed that he
would be shipped off to Afghanistan where the terrorist camps were
based, routing out Al Qaeda and Taliban warriors. But soon, Bush ordered
the invasion of Iraq."
In an interview with Truthdig.com,
Young—who suffered an anoxic brain injury in 2008—said he had been
contemplating "conventional" suicide, but decided to go on hospice care,
"stop feeding and fade away."
He said, "This way, instead of committing the conventional suicide
and I am out of the picture, people have a way to stop by or call and
say their goodbyes," Young said. "I felt this was a fairer way to treat
people than to just go out with a note."
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