Что удалось скрыть? На две недели задержали показ передачи - да, скрыли - нет, хотели скрыть? - а кто б не хотел. Свобода слова тут при чем? Писали об этом фсе кому не лень.
In late April 2004, U.S. television news-magazine 60 Minutes II broke a story involving abuse and humiliation of Iraqi inmates by a group of U.S. soldiers. The story included photographs depicting the abuse of prisoners,
A May 2004 article by Seymour M. Hersh in The New Yorker magazine explored the abuses in detail, and used as its source a copy of the Taguba report.
The New Yorker, under the direction of editor David Remnick, posted a report on its website by Hersh, along with a number of graphic and disturbing images of the torture taken by U.S. military prison guards with digital cameras. The article, entitled "Torture at Abu Ghraib", was followed in the next two weeks by two more articles on the same subject, "Chain of Command” and "The Gray Zone,” also by Mr. Hersh. It was only after CBS learned that The New Yorker planned to publish the pictures in its next issue that they went ahead with their report on April 28.
Several periodicals, such as The New York Times and The Boston Globe also called for Rumsfeld's resignation. The cover of The Economist, which had backed President Bush in the 2000 election, carried a photo of the abuse with the words "Resign, Rumsfeld." Perhaps most notably, The Army Times claimed that Rumsfeld's role in the scandal "amount(ed) to professional negligence", wrote "shame... on the chairman (of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) and secretary (of defense)", and insinuated that Rumsfeld was a "moron."
тоже в Омерике умалчивают? Wow.
On February 13, 2006, the American Bar Association (ABA) denounced the warrantless domestic surveillance program, accusing the President of exceeding his powers under the Constitution. The ABA also formulated a policy opposing any future government use of electronic surveillance in the United States for foreign intelligence purposes without obtaining warrants from a special secret court as required by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
According to a report in The Boston Globe on February 2, 2006 three law professors, David D. Cole (Georgetown University), Richard Epstein (University of Chicago), and Philip Heymann (Harvard), said that what Bush is doing is unprecedented. Bush's claim that other presidents asserted that wartime powers supersede an act of Congress, "is either intentionally misleading or downright false," Cole said. He said Bush is misstating the In Re Sealed Case No. 02-001 ruling which supported Congressional regulation of surveillance. Epstein believes the United States Supreme Court would reject the Administration's argument and said, "I find every bit of this legal argument disingenuous...The president's position is essentially that (Congress) is not doing the right thing, so I'm going to act on my own." Professor Heymann, a former deputy US attorney general said, "The bottom line is, I know of no electronic surveillance for intelligence purposes since the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was passed that was not done under the . . . statute."
Cole, Epstein, Heynmann and eleven other prominent legal scholars (Beth Nolan, Curtis Bradley, Geoffrey Stone, Harold Hongju Koh, Kathleen Sullivan, Laurence Tribe, Martin Lederman, Ronald Dworkin, Walter Dellinger, William S. Sessions and William Van Alstyne) wrote a letter to Congress that appeared in the New York Review of Books on February 9, 2006.[11] They wrote that "the Justice Department's defense of what it concedes was secret and warrantless electronic surveillance of persons within the United States fails to identify any plausible legal authority for such surveillance. Accordingly the program appears on its face to violate existing law." They summarized:
“ In conclusion, the DOJ letter fails to offer a plausible legal defense of the NSA domestic spying program. If the administration felt that FISA was insufficient, the proper course was to seek legislative amendment, as it did with other aspects of FISA in the Patriot Act, and as Congress expressly contemplated when it enacted the wartime wiretap provision in FISA. One of the crucial features of a constitutional democracy is that it is always open to the President—or anyone else—to seek to change the law. But it is also beyond dispute that, in such a democracy, the President cannot simply violate criminal laws behind closed doors because he deems them obsolete or impracticable. ”
Professor Peter Swire, the C. William O’Neill Professor of Law at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law and Visiting Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, wrote a detailed "Legal FAQs on NSA Wiretaps" concluding that "[b]ased on the facts available to date, the wiretap program appears to be clearly illegal."[83] Prof. Swire has previously written a very detailed history and analysis of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, published in Volume 72 of the George Washington Law Review, at 1306 (2004) and previously chaired a White House Working Group, including the intelligence agencies, on how to update electronic surveillance law for the Internet Age.
Robert Reinstein, dean of the law school at Temple University, has asserted that the warrantless domestic spying program is
“ a pretty straightforward case where the president is acting illegally... When Congress speaks on questions that are domestic in nature, I really can't think of a situation where the president has successfully asserted a constitutional power to supersede that... This is domestic surveillance over American citizens for whom there is no evidence or proof that they are involved in any illegal activity, and it is in contravention of a statute of Congress specifically designed to prevent this. ”
Mr. Reinstein asserted that the broad consensus among legal scholars and national security experts is similar to his own analysis, and he predicted that the courts will rule that the program is unconstitutional. New York Times
Edward Lazarus, author, law professor and former U.S. Supreme Court clerk and federal prosecutor, has argued in articles such as "Warrantless Wiretapping: Why It Seriously Imperils the Separation of Powers, And Continues the Executive's Sapping of Power From Congress and the Courts", that "Unilateral executive power is tyranny, plain and simple".
Orin S. Kerr, a professor at The George Washington University Law School, prominent blogger and scholar of the legal framework of electronic surveillance has opined that the issues are complex, but that after his first analysis he concluded that the wiretapping probably does not infringe on Fourth Amendment constitutional rights, though it probably does violate FISA. President Bush has maintained he acted within "legal authority derived from the constitution" and that Congress "granted [him] additional authority to use military force against al Qaeda".[85] However, while the President may argue that the necessary statutory authority to override FISA's warrant provisions is provided by the authorization to use "all necessary force" in the employment of military resources to protect the security of the United States, and that the use of wiretapping is a qualifying use of force (under the terms of the authorization for the use of military force against al-Qaida as found in Senate Joint Resolution 23, 2001), Kerr believes that this justification is ultimately unpersuasive, as is the argument that the President's power as the Commander-in-Chief (as derived from Article Two of the United States Constitution) provides him with the necessary constitutional authority to circumvent FISA during a time of war.[86] Kerr cautiously estimates that about eight of the nine Supreme Court justices would agree with him that Article Two cannot trump statutes like FISA.[87]
Robert M. Bloom, Professor of Law at Boston College, says this in a paper entitled "The Constitutional Infirmity of Warrantless NSA Surveillance: The Abuse of Presidential Power and the Injury to the Fourth Amendment," published on February 19, 2007, which he co-authored with William J. Dunn, a former Defense Department intelligence analyst, also of BC Law School:[12]
“ President Bush argues that the surveillance program passes constitutional inquiry based upon his constitutionally delegated war and foreign policy powers, as well as from the congressional joint resolution passed following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. These arguments fail to supersede the explicit and exhaustive statutory framework provided by Congress and amended repeatedly since 2001 for judicial approval and authorization of electronic surveillance. The specific regulation by Congress based upon war powers shared concurrently with the President provides a constitutional requirement that cannot be bypassed or ignored by the President. The President’s choice to do so violates the Constitution and risks the definite sacrifice of individual rights for the speculative gain from warrantless action. ”
Glenn Greenwald, constitutional lawyer, author and prominent blogger (Greenwald's legal blog) arguing that the NSA program is illegal summarized:[13]
“ Ultimately, though, the entire legal debate in the NSA scandal comes down to these few, very clear and straightforward facts: Congress passed a law in 1978 making it a criminal offense to eavesdrop on Americans without judicial oversight. Nobody of any significance ever claimed that that law was unconstitutional. The Administration not only never claimed it was unconstitutional, but Bush expressly asked for changes to the law in the aftermath of 9/11, thereafter praised the law, and misled Congress and the American people into believing that they were complying with the law. In reality, the Administration was secretly breaking the law, and then pleaded with The New York Times not to reveal this. Once caught, the Administration claimed it has the right to break the law and will continue to do so. ”
After the Supreme Court's judgment in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, Greenwald wrote: "The administration’s theories to justify the President’s lawbreaking have always been frivolous. But for those pretending not to recognize that fact, the Supreme Court has so ruled."[14]
Jordan Paust, Mike and Teresa Baker College Professor of Law at the University of Houston Law Center, rejected the administration's legal arguments for the NSA program writing:[15]
“ George W. Bush and US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales claim that domestic spying in manifest violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was authorized by Congress in broad language in the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) regarding persons responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Similar claims have been made in a December 22 letter from Assistant Attorney General William Moschella to the leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. The claims are patently false...
Moreover, any so-called inherent presidential authority to spy on Americans at home (perhaps of the kind denounced in Youngstown (1952) and which no strict constructionist should pretend to recognize), has been clearly limited in the FISA in 18 U.S.C. § 2511(2)(f) and 50 U.S.C. § 1809(a)(1), as supplemented by the criminal provisions in 18 U.S.C. § 2511(1).
”
William C. Banks, Professor of Law and Director of the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism at Syracuse University argued that the NSA program is unconstitutional, writing that "in the unlikely event that legal authority for the NSA program can be found, this domestic spying violates the Fourth Amendment."
John Dean, Author and former White House Counsel to President Richard Nixon testified before Congress on March 31, 2006, on the issue of censuring George Bush for authorizing the NSA wiretap program, saying "I hope... you will not place the president above the law by inaction. As I was gathering my thoughts yesterday to respond to the hasty invitation, it occurred to me that had the Senate or House, or both, censured or somehow warned Richard Nixon, the tragedy of Watergate might have been prevented. Hopefully the Senate will not sit by while even more serious abuses unfold before it."