Report: Ashcroft, Tenet dodged wiretapping inquiry

Report finds Bush administration “undermined” DOJ on warrantless spying analysis

Former Attorney General John Ashcroft and former CIA Director George Tenet declined to be interviewed in an internal review of the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, according to a summary of the report, declassified on Friday.

“…[The] other officials who declined interviews are Bush’s ex-chief of staff, Andrew Card; Dick Cheney’s former top aide David Addington; and former top Justice Department lawyer John Yoo,” reported the Associated Press.

The warrantless spying, referenced by the document as the “President’s Surveillance Program,” was kept under careful lock with only certain officials being “read in” to the program. Even members of the FISA court were kept out of the loop, and only three Department of Justice lawyers were aware of it, the report says.

Secrecy surrounding the program’s early legal analysis led the White House to trust only one DOJ attorney to formulate its authorization: John Yoo. Ashcroft actually complained of the inconvenience it caused him to not have his top deputies read in to the program’s details. Only much later, as other attorneys began to second-guess Yoo’s legal memorandum, were any objections raised, the report says.

According to Yoo’s legal reasoning, the President’s Surveillance Program was legal because the Fourth Amendment is aimed at curtailing law enforcement abuses, and not intended to affect military operations. The warrantless wiretapping program, in his view, was a military operation and therefore not subject to FISA or any other court’s oversight.

Ultimately, the report says, “it was extraordinary and inappropriate that a single DOJ attorney, John Yoo, was relied upon to conduct the initial legal assessment of the PSP, and that the lack of oversight and review of Yoo’s work, as is customarily the practice of the [Office of Legal Counsel], contributed to a legal analysis of the PSP that at a minimum was factually flawed.”

The report concludes: “The White House’s strict controls over DOJ access to the PSP undermined the DOJ’s ability to perform its critical legal function during the PSP’s early phase of operation.”

Five inspectors general from U.S. intelligence circles reviewed thousands of documents and interviewed officials such as, “John Negroponte, who served as director of national intelligence, National Security Agency Director Michael V. Hayden, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales,” reported The Washington Post.

The review was ordered by Congress in legislation that effectively altered the FISA laws to suit President Bush’s agenda.

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