Police State or Accountability Now?

If Police, FBI, NSA, CIA, and others don't have to follow rules, they don't.

The below [found here]

U.S. SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY

CONTACT: Office of Senator Leahy, 202-224-4242

VERMONT

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Attorney General To Postpone Signing Of New FBI Guidelines For National Security Investigations After Request By Leahy And Specter WASHINGTON (Thursday, August 21, 2008) – Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Ranking Member Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) Thursday released a letter they have received from the office of Attorney General Michael Mukasey, agreeing to their request that he postpone the signing of new guidelines for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to conduct national security investigations. The letter was in response to an August 18 letter from Leahy and Specter in which they asked for the postponement to allow sufficient time for consultation with Congress, to evaluate civil liberties concerns, and to hear the testimony of FBI Director Robert Mueller at an upcoming Judiciary Committee oversight hearing. In the letter, the Attorney General’s office agreed to wait until after hearing Mueller’s testimony at the September 17 hearing before signing off on the new guidelines. The letter did state, however, that the Attorney General intended to sign off on the guidelines before the preexisting October 1 target implementation date. The guidelines are designed to improve the FBI’s ability to gather intelligence and respond to national security matters. Concerns have been raised that the guidelines would also provide additional authorities not currently in law, allowing the FBI to employ more expansive investigative practices, with limited ability for oversight. The full text of the letter received from the Attorney General’s office follows. A PDF is also available here.

[more from Leahy's page]

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If they are getting away with completely abusing us from the top, the trickle down is that we get abused all the way down their authority chain to towns.

[my argument on this subject]

This blogger's email: stevengerickson@yahoo.com

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U.S. SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY

CONTACT: Office of Senator Leahy, 202-224-4242

VERMONT

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Leahy, Specter Press White House For OLC Torture Documents WASHINGTON (Tuesday, August 19, 2008) – Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Ranking Member Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) today pressed the White House to respond to outstanding requests from members of Congress for information about legal analysis and advice related to detention and interrogation policies provided to the administration by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). The Judiciary Committee’s jurisdiction includes oversight of the offices within the Department of Justice, including OLC. Leahy, Specter and other members of the Judiciary Committee have sought access to OLC documents concerning the administration’s controversial detention and interrogation policies. The Office of Legal Counsel has provided memorandums, letters and legal advice to agencies within the Executive Branch about interrogation techniques, interpretations of the Geneva Conventions, and liability concerns for interrogators, but the White House has provided only a limited number of redacted, classified documents to Congress. In a letter to White House Counsel Fred Fielding, Leahy and Specter again pushed the White House to provide the Committee with the requested documents. [more]

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Will Leahy and others prevent the FBI from following in the footsteps of the CIA, which has almost no accountability, so that they can also smuggle in heroin and cocaine into the US to fund political assassinations, framing citizens to be held as political prisoners, and ALSO have covert torture and execution camps?

Should the FBI become like the CIA and covertly keep sucking up more and more money covertly, continually growing, running governments and other agencies, and becoming the same uncontrollable monster?

It looks like the CIA is using its torture detainee transport planes to import drugs into the US. [more]

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[click here] for the text that I sent to Connecticut Congressman Chris Shays, 11:30 AM EST September 9, 2008