ROVE & GONZALEZ "Dream Come True" - The Plot Against The First Amendment (Harpers)

The Plot Against the First Amendment
DEPARTMENT No Comment
BY Scott Horton
PUBLISHED April 21, 2007

In the summer of 2005, Alberto Gonzales paid a visit to British Attorney General Peter Goldsmith. A British civil servant who attended told me “it was quite amazing really. Gonzales was obsessed with the Official Secrets Act. In particular, he wanted to know exactly how it was used to block newspapers and broadcasters from running news stories derived from official secrets and how it could be used to criminalise persons who had no formal duty to maintain secrets. He saw it as a panacea for his problems: silence the press. Then you can torture and abuse prisoners and what you will—without fear of political repercussions. It was the easy route to dealing with the Guantánamo dilemma. Don't close down Guantánamo. Close down the press. We were appalled by it.” Appalled, he added, “but not surprised.”

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By this theory, any receipt by an unauthorized person of classified information and correspondence concerning it is converted into an act of espionage, and thus made prosecutable.

The object of this exercise has been broadly misunderstood by many who have followed it—and particularly by Iraq War critics who delight in a perceived slap-down of AIPAC. But this is tragically short-sighted. If the prosecution succeeds, the Bush Administration will have converted the Espionage Act of 1917 into something it was never intended to be: an American copy of the British Official Secrets Act. It is likely to lead quickly to efforts to criminalize journalists dealing with sensitive information in the national security sector, as well as their sources.

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This would be a dream world for Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales. And a nightmare for the rest of us. And the AIPAC case could, if it succeeds, bring the nation much closer to its realization.

more at:
http://harpers.org/archive/2007/04/horton-20070421ymwmeldhvami

They passed it on.

Isn't that, um, like, sort of well, an issue?

to the public. No?

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

the AIPAC espionage case is that these fellows -- neither of whom is a journalist -- were passing military secrets to an agent of a foreign nation's intelligence services. That information had to do with Iran, and the episode involved the neoconservative effort to start a military conflict that would involve the USA versus Iran.

I don't pretend to be an expert, but the article linked to initially did seem pretty convincing to me.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

Like many articles of its ilk, it advances the claim that the prosecution is based solely on the unauthorized reception of classified information.

My original reply was not strong enough. The article is unadulterated bull****. The only proper issue at hand was whether, having received this information, it was a punishable crime to pass this information on, not to the public, but to known, public agents of a foreign power, in this case, Israel. The reception is not the issue. The unauthorized re-transmission of the information is the issue. The case being made is that, since you shouldn't have the information in the first place, you damned well should know better than to think of the information as belonging to you and being able to pass it on to a foreign power at your own private discretion. I do not find that assertion to be unreasonable.

Had the AIPAC people simply sent the information to a newspaper, and the newspaper had published the information, or if the AIPAC people had published the information themselves and accepted the heat for it, there would be no espionage case. Period.

Edit: Let me add one more thing. Gonzales being a jerk does not make everyone his department prosecutes innocent or deserving of sympathy and defense.

It is the expectation that the ruling will be used to broaden the criminaization of leaked information. Including extending it to previously protected persons in the press.

The Official Secrets Act does grant the British government an appalling amount of power over the handing of information, including power over the press. The argument here is not that those being prosecuted in the AIPAC case should not be prosecuted, but that that we have to watch the ruling to see that it doesn't establish a wider precedent.

You can't convict someone of transmitting classified information to a foreign power and establish a precedent criminalizing the mere reception of that information. The article's attempting to argue that since Gonzales might like such reception to be criminalized, that's what's going to happen. It's just totally unjustified by a fair reading of the law though. The Espionage Act doesn't support such a precedent, and nor does this case. Even if Gonzales is a bad man and might like such a result, he can't achieve it; without the re-transmission component, the judge would've already thrown this case out of court.

I massively disagree that the argument "is not that those being prosecuted in the AIPAC case should not be prosecuted". That is the point of every article portraying this as a government assault on the 1st Amendment - and there have been a great many. The point of these articles is that what the ("ex-") AIPAC officials did OUGHT NOT BE A CRIME, and actually prosecuting and convicting them would be so horrific and terrible that it must not be permitted. And how do they do this? By arguing that the case is about the RECEPTION of classified material, and not the TRANSMISSION of classified material to a foreign power. By simply asking the reader to shut his brain off to the other critical part of the case and focus only on the reception issue, the argument is made more powerful than it ought to be.

The only legal importance about the reception of classified material is that the people who received it in this case knew it was classified and that they shouldn't have had any reasonable belief that they could just sell it to the Russians, to use a different example. That they gave it to Israel for free does not liberate them of culpability... if the law is read correctly. Therefore, the reception issue is purely context for the (re-)transmission part. To argue that a judge is going to convict these two people for the reception minus the transmission is... well it's unadulterated bull****, and I laugh at it.

Edit: To be a little generous, the argument seems to be, this legal theory makes the acceptance of the classified material a part, a component, of a crime. Yes, it does, but not because the information was received; rather, because of what was done with it! A heavy part of this case is that the people in question knew damned well that this information was classified; if it wasn't, they'd have no reason to think it would be valuable to Israel and have worth to bother to hand over.

articles that attempt to hype a position by adding Rove's name usually do so to cover-up another area of weakness. The neoconservative/AIPAC espionage case is not being tried on a "States Secret" law. It would be impossible to pass a new law, and then go back and try people for violating it.

The AIPAC officials were engaged in an intelligence operation that was not for this country's benefit. Those who support their agenda will continue to try to confuse people by pretending it involves Amendment 1 issues. It doesn't. It's about espionage. It's about a private group having an intelligence operation that coordinated efforts with the OSP to push for a war in Iran.

Hopefully, people can focus on what is real, rather than be fooled by the distractions.

This person's job would be to know, monitor, separate, monitor, and control WH leaks for propaganda and attack (Plame) and unauthorized leaks that could hurt them or their friends. This person would be like a third President - Bush, Cheney, and a Leak Czar.

Once you have control of the information to which a society may have access, and criminal sanctions to enforce control of that information, you no longer have a Democracy.

Truly we are witness to a 'remaking' of our democratic form of government into an imperial controlled empire, with all the powers and privileges reserved to the ruler and his closest advisors.

or does it only apply in the other direction?

till the cows come home.

Religion? A desire as a member of minority to be one of the "white" boys? What? What makes a man to turn so evil?

I don't think it's money, more of power

I'm going to have to check on the timing of those "treasonous" pieces they published.

ever seen, from yesterday:

***** ROVE Met With NBC In 1999 And Promised Them The Moon
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x726781#726880
Link: http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/6820