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Bush III: Obama on Torture & Wiretapping

Bush III: Obama on Torture & Wiretapping
“They have drawn a line in the sand between the executive and the judiciary, saying, 'You do not control these documents, we do,’ " said Jon Eisenberg, the attorney for the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, which filed the suit against warrantless wiretapping. The Obama administration’s assertion of the phony “state secrets” privilege strikes at the heart of the Constitution and justice system. Eisenberg is right in that if courts cannot get at the facts, they cannot decide justly. And if the executive branch can cover up crimes against the Constitution (as warrantless wiretaps are) by keeping all of the facts secret, then the court system itself becomes corrupted and irrelevant.

The Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation charged in the lawsuit that the U.S. government unconstitutionally wiretapped them. The irony of the “state secrets” argument in this case is that the federal government accidentally faxed a document to the foundation in 2005 proving it had been wiretapping the organization without a warrant before it had listed the organization as linked to terrorism. The organization seeks the document so that it can be submitted to the court as evidence — something the Obama administration does not want to do because it would supposedly jeopardize national security.

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