The Department of Justice’s (DOJ for short) paranoid and secretive approach to litigating the numerous lawsuits regarding its “allegedly” illegal wiretapping program is beyond the boundary of the absurd, and has reached Kafkaesque proportions. That’s not my opinion, its the experience of an attorney for one of the plaintiffs who is quoted in this New York Times article by Adam Liptak today:
The tactics, said a lawyer in the Oregon case, Jon B. Eisenberg, prompted him to conduct unusual research.
“Sometime during all of this,” Mr. Eisenberg said, “I went on Amazon and ordered a copy of Kafka’s ‘The Trial,’ because I needed a refresher course in bizarre legal procedures.”
What prompted Mr. Eisenberg to make such a claim? Read on …
(cont.)
According to Liptak’s article here are some of the strange goings on that have become commonplace in these lawsuits:
1. DOJ attorneys have filed pleadings in cases by placing them in rooms at the Justice Department, essentially filing them with themselves.
2. Judges have been told that they must write their decisions on DOJ computers.
3.DOJ lawyers have threatened to seize exhibits filed with the court by plaintiffs as part of their pleadings.
4.DOJ lawyers have refused to disclose information about their own security clearances to judges, claiming their response would reveal “classified information.”
5. DOJ attorneys argued that an appeal of its unusual “procedures” in one case before a federal appeals court in Cincinnati is moot (i.e., can no longer be litigated) because the administration announced last week that it would submit the program to a secret court, ending its eavesdropping without warrants.
6. Had the FBI take physical possession of one plaintiff attorney’s laptop computer to “scrub it” of any “classified material” which was inadvertently leaked by the DOJ attorney to the plaintiff in that case.
7. Sent FBI agents to remove documents from a federal judge’s possession on the grounds that they contained “sensitive material” even though the documents in question had already been distributed to parties overseas.
8. A DOJ attorney informed the same judge in No. 7 above that “The document must be completely removed from the case, and plaintiffs are not allowed to rely on it to prove their claims.”
You see what I mean. It’s one absurdity after another. If the DOJ has its way, none of these cases will ever be resolved by the Justice system. In essence, this is a direct assertion of raw, untrammeled executive authority in violation of the separation of powers doctrine provided under the Constitution. In effect, Abu Gonzales’ Justice Department is telling the Judiciary that all they can do is act as a rubber stamp for executive decisions where “The War on Terror” is concerned.
There can be little doubt that the person ultimately behind this decision is our own modern day version of Cardinal Richelieu, Vice President Cheney, who has pushed for the broadest possible interpretation of Presidential powers in our history since the day he took office in January, 2001. Given enough time, he would anoint Bush as King, turn Congress into merely a debating society, and allow the the Federal Judiciary to continue only to provide a patina of legality for executive decisions regarding our rights and liberties.
That’s all ridiculous. Anything to prevent the impeachable offense from coming out.
in today’s news bucket entry I cited the opening graph of the NYT article:
“Plaintiffs and judges’ clerks cannot see its secret filings. Judges have to make appointments to review them and are not allowed to keep copies.[.]”
This IS beyond a Police State.
For the love of God, when will the Impeachment begin to have this Administration cleansed? In fact, we need a full Nuremburg style trial with all 14 in the docket.
The top 9 defendants are:
Bush
Cheney
Gonzales
Addington
Rove
Scooter
Rice
Rumsfeld
Cambone
Feith.
Now how could I have forgotten him?
Thanks BooMan. You’ve jogged my memory. Let’s add Perle, and Wolfie.
Thanks for the analysis, Steven. “Kafkaesque” is “par for the course” with this regime.
Jeff
Hey Zeus. In any court of law, there are rules and procedures for the filing of documents, confidentiality agreements, etc. If a document is secret it can be filed “under seal”, for example. But, this bizarre sham of justice is beyond the pale. I can’t understand why the Judge doesn’t first sanction the DOJ and then grant a motion for default judgment in plaintiff’s favor. How can the DOJ be above the law?
They’ve been intimidated by the concerns over national security, charges of aiding terrorists and the death threats made against judges. Judges are people just like you and me. They are no braver in general than your ordinary American, and just as susceptible as anyone elese to claims that national security is at stake.
It’s the only option to reassert the balance of power.
IF???
You said it well. However, these tactics, led by Gonzales and Cheney (read Addington), merely exacerbate similar DOJ tactics that have been going on for decades. Here’s my experience, when Carter was president:
It was slam-dunk EEO case. My client was a low-level employee, 25 years+ at GTE, working on an overseas project for which there were two security clearances: one for the identity of the government agency which had contracted with GTE, and the other for the country where the work took place. In scaling back operations, they “got him on medical” under ridiculously vague and illegal medical rules. The information sheltered by security classification was unnecessary to the case and we sued in state court alone, not once mentioning the government or its contract.
GTE enlisted the help of a DOJ lawyer (“Motor-Mouth”) who milked “classified” to a bust. In Northern CA then, unlike the East Coast, judges don’t see DOJ often. Motormouth was allowed, without pro hac vice, to essentially intervene without being an intervenor. She had a man appear, briefcase chained to his wrist, to accompany her into judge’s chambers with a classified exhibit/declaration which I wasn’t allowed to see (the judge, of course, didn’t have the security clearance, either, but that didn’t bother him). Based on this exhibit the judge excluded the introduction of an enormous amount of evidence, under the pretense that answers to questions about it would be classified. I was non-suited.
Of course, if there had been any real security issue, the feds would have been all over my office, but they weren’t. Nobody wanted to know if I ever learned the identity of the agency or the country.
It turned out that GTE’s V.P., Clark Feister, who had made the final decision to terminate my client, had been solicited by his friend Bill Perry to join him in the Carter Administration. During the lawsuit, as DOJ was helping GTE, he was being vetted by Justice to be Ass’t Sec. of the Air Force. That explains why GTE seemed so sure of the outcome it made no settlement offer beyond a nominal $5K.
That was standard political corruption. This is far more serious in my view. No disrespect intended.
This is far more serious in my view.
Absolutely.