Secret Judges, Public Resignations

Not everybody thinks these tactics are reasonable.

Today, a powerful, secret judge has resigned in direct protest to the President's assertion that he has ulitmate power [and his Attorney General's basic agreement to that despite what happens to the PATRIOT ACT and congressional or judicial power checks]. The powerful federal judge, U.S. District Judge James Robertson, sits among a council of 11 judges on the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court [for a fascinating, brilliant This American Life story on the FISA, check this out. It's really great] a court whose entire purpose is to issue instant, emergency warrants that are legal and entirely covert, and who has gained substantial power and influence in the Terror Era, but also has become a target of The Administration's power-grappling manipulation:

Robertson indicated privately to colleagues in recent conversations that he was concerned that information gained from warrantless NSA surveillance could have then been used to obtain FISA warrants. FISA court Presiding Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who had been briefed on the spying program by the administration, raised the same concern in 2004 and insisted that the Justice Department certify in writing that it was not occurring.

"They just don't know if the product of wiretaps were used for FISA warrants -- to kind of cleanse the information," said one source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the FISA warrants. "What I've heard some of the judges say is they feel they've participated in a Potemkin court."

Robertson's resignation comes because of his concerns that illegal information was used to get the warrants- it's an interesting issue, because the secret court, up until this point in time, wasn't necessarily known for its hard-nosed reequirments for warrant requests prior to 9/11. If the federal government had reason to suspect an individual or a group, and had reasonable evidence to support a legal, secret, search, the FISA gave them provisions to do so.

So here, Robertson's concern is this: the intelligence itself that was used to get the FISA warrants from the court in the Bush Terror Era would have been the information learned from the searches and taps after the warrants were issued previously. This is like money laundering [Mr. DeLay? Any thoughts?] only in secret, illegal intelligence- the Administration is knowingly laundering dirty intelligence to make it clean.

Also, they're taking relevent information to the court to do this- information which might, reasonably, yield more information from further taps. But that means that there's likely tons of documented, secret, unused dirty information all over the place, all covering who-knows-what... [and check out Think Progress' breakdown which shows that no, Clinton and Carter, contrary to rightwing talking points, did NOT authorize illegal, secret wiretaps on American citizens.]