- 911 or shortly after, Bush ‘militarizes’ Our response to 911
- Bush secretly declares himself UE
- Bush secretly makes ‘Suspicion’ the domestic surveillance standard for Citizens, replacing Probable Cause
- Bush creates ‘The Program’ to surveil citizens domestically
- Domestic DB TIA moved to Pentagon
- Telecoms told to ‘give it up’ for National Security
- Quantico Circuit(s) installed
- NSA ‘hooked-up’ to TIA for Foreign input
- FBI ‘hooked-up’ to TIA for Domestic ‘fetches’ using NSLs

So, for instance, a ’suspect’ phone call originating in ME lands on an American citizen’s cellphone in Hoboken.

- NSA intercepts the incoming call, feeds TIA (the Database of The Program)
- DoD scans the social network of the receiver (to three degrees?) and makes a threat determination
- For any identified ‘targets’ deemed ‘of interest,’ out go the NSLs through the FBI

That seems to me just like what Bush would do. Declare himself King, Above the Law, and Immediately start ‘Over-watching’ the Citizenry for any ‘dissent.’

So, if the NSLs were being used to launder ‘domestic leads’ generated by The Program at DoD – on the basis of suspicion, which has all kinds of wrongness about it – then is it possible that these DoD NSLs were what Gonzo was cryptically referring to as ‘other intelligence activities’ in his SJC testimony?

Are you saying that it could be the Hospital Visit was about ‘bringing The Program into compliance with the Law’ over the DoD use of NSLs?

Maybe that’s why Bush and Cheney were so cocky about invading Iraq? Could they have been ‘over-watching’ All of US – looking for ‘unpatriotic dissent’ – as they Drove US with Lies to an Aggressive War of Choice, against a Nation that had nothing to do with 911?

Aside: we didn’t know which program or which parts of the program were causing the legal problems. EW (I think) figured out that at some point there was a limited hang out of ‘the program’ which did not expose the whole thing, and from then on references to ‘the program’ were fuzzy.

Back to Haynes. The structure of the MCAs was to give only convictions (kangaroo court by any other name): defendants could not see the charges, ‘evidence’ collected by torture and hearsay was permitted, the defense lawyers could have little or no contact with the defendants, and on and on. Colonel Davis said that Haynes said that ‘but we can’t have acquittals, we can only have convictions’. Goldsmith in his ‘The Terror Presidency’ p. 121 speaks to the difficulty of establishing the procedures for the military commissions, and that the Defense Department threw up roadblock after roadblock to the development of the military commissions which they believed were fundamentally unfair. Goldsmith p. 122 (typos mine)

My time in the Pentagon led me to doubt whether the Defense Department could, without the legitimizing impact of congressional ratification, craft long-term legal policies for incapacitating terrorists.

Haynes was at the DoD while all the rationals for war crimes were being developed. Goldsmith went from Dod to DoJ then quit government. Note that the DoD not the DoJ declassified Yoo’s memo. I believe we have a severe case of what I call Thumbelina going on here – not me – he did it (waves thumb at next guy) – not me- he did it (waves thumb at next guy), with war crimes instead of broken cookie jars. Cross departmental warfare at its worst. The 4th branch – Cheney and Addington, with the lend/lease of their lawyer seem to be trying to prevent ‘fall guy’ from being written into Haynes’ resume.

Wednesday, March 10, 2004 – The Ashcroft Hospital showdown
“I was headed home. My security detail was driving me.” Comey got a call from Ashcroft’s chief of staff, who said that although Mrs. Ashcroft had “banned all visitors” from her husband’s room in the ICU, where he was in his sixth day, a call had just come to his hospital room indicating that Gonzales, then White House counsel, and Andy Card, then Bush’s chief of staff, were on their way. (Comey seemed to recall that the call to Ashcroft came from the president; he says it certainly came from the White House.)

Comey made frantic calls to his own chief of staff and to Robert Mueller, then FBI director , while he raced to the hospital, sirens blasting.”

And of course we’ve recently seen that DOD was improperly partnering with FBI to use NSLs on its own people.