Government Executive - Authors - Philip Bump

Here's How Newly-Released Benghazi Emails Could Actually Embarrass the White House

Philip Bump, The Wire — Wed, 30 Apr 2014 12:41:01 -0400

In the immediate aftermath of the 2012 attack on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya, the White House quickly jumped from questions about the cause of the attack to blaming the incendiary YouTube video promoted by Florida pastor Terry Jones.

Last May, a set of emails was leaked by opponents of President Obama outlining the development of the talking points then-UN Ambassador Susan Rice used in a series of television appearances following the September 11, 2012 attack. The White House then released a more complete set of messages, effectively neutralizing critique of how the talking points were created.

New documents, obtained by the conservative group Judicial Watch by a Freedom of Information Act request, include a different set of talking points created by Obama advisor Ben Rhodes and sent to administration officials including spokesman Jay Carney. At the top, it outlines four goals:

We've highlighted the most important point: Rhodes' assertion that the protests "are rooted in an Internet video."

At the time this email was sent — about 8 p.m. on Friday, September 14 — a separate set of emails was bounding back-and-forth between the CIA, the FBI, the State Department, and the White House. Those emails, the ones that were the subject of the discussion last May, offer a much different and much more reserved description of what prompted the attack. An email sent from the CIA to the White House at about 5 p.m. included this language:

The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the US Consulate and subsequently its annex. … On 10 September we warned of social media reports calling for a demonstration in front of the Embassy and that jihadists were threatening to break into the Embassy.

Over the next night, much of those specifics were stripped out by CIA director Michael Morell. But when Rhodes sent his proposed talking points, the nuance of "currently available information" was lost.

The new documents also include an email sent from a staffer for Rice to a group of employees in her office. It walks through a conversation the State Department's Victoria Nuland held on background with members of the press on the Wednesday after the attacks. In that conversation, Nuland was similarly vague. "Toria said that she couldn't speak to the identity of the perpetrators but that it was clearly a complex attack," the email reads. When Nuland was asked if the attack was linked to the video disparaging the Prophet Muhammed, "she said she could not confirm a connect as we simply don't know — and we won't know until there's an investigation."

What Rhodes was apparently advocating was to eliminate that nuance. And when Rice appeared on Fox News that Sunday with Chris Wallace, she was asked to respond to a statement made by Carney.

CARNEY (on video): This is not a case of protests directed at the United States writ large or at U.S. policy. This is in response to a video that is offensive.

WALLACE: You don't really believe that?

RICE: Chris, absolutely I believe that. In fact, it is the case. We had the evolution of the Arab spring over the last many months. But what sparked the recent violence was the airing on the Internet of a very hateful very offensive video that has offended many people around the world.

One point of critique on the Benghazi affair has long been that the White House wanted to play up the role of the YouTube video in order to deflect critique of their policies. It's not clear if Rhodes had information about the attack (or believed he had information about the attack) that isn't reflected in the documents, but it seems clear that he overstepped the caution that was exhibited by other members of the administration — perhaps leading to Rice's strong and much-derided assertion that the attack was in response to the video. It was his job to protect the White House, but it's likely that this argument has caused much more trouble for Obama than it prevented.

If you'd really like to fall down the rabbit hole of conspiracy theories, by the way, the new documents have you covered there, too. On September 27, the key actors in the White House's response team passed around a news article from FoxNews.com which indicated that the administration knew by September 12 that the video didn't play a role. All of the discussion about that article was redacted.

Correction: This post originally stated that Jones created the video at issue. He merely promoted it.

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The FBI Allegedly Used the No-Fly List to Coerce Muslims to be Informants

Philip Bump, The Wire — Wed, 23 Apr 2014 10:23:24 -0400

Four Muslim men are accusing the FBI of using the "no fly" list as an threat in order to coerce them into cooperating with terror investigations. It's easy to see how it would be an effective threat: the highly secret no-fly list essentially creates a form of house arrest from which it has been nearly impossible to be removed. The men filed the complaint in federal court in New York on Tuesday, The Washington Post reports.

In the lawsuit, one of the men, Awais Sajjad, says that he went to Kennedy Airport in September 2012 but was prevented from boarding his flight to Afghanistan. FBI agents questioned him, demanding he cooperate with their investigations and reminding him that they had the authority to take him off the list.

Jameel Algibhah's story is similar, as told by The Guardian. He was asked to infiltrate a mosque in Queens, with an FBI agent allegedly reminding him that, “We’re the only ones who can take you off the list." And there's Naveed Shinwari, who had flown to Afghanistan to get married. On his return to the United States, he attempted to fly from Nebraska to Connecticut for a new job, and was told that he was not allowed to fly. "The more you help us, the more we can help you," an agent told him.

"The no-fly list is supposed to be about ensuring aviation safety, but the FBI is using it to force innocent people to become informants," Ramzi Kassem, associate professor of law at the City University of New York told the Post. "The practice borders on extortion."

To the Guardian, a "former senior FBI official" denied that the list was used to put pressure on possible informants. But it's easy to see how it could be used that way.

It appears that, of the 800,000-plus people on the list, a total of one person has successfully petitioned to have her name removed. In January, a U.S. District Judge ordered that Rahinah Ibrahim be removed from the list, according to Wired. Ibrahim was placed on the list after agents visited her apartment near Stanford University, where she was enrolled, to ask about possible links to a terror organization in Malaysia. Ibrahim was not even allowed to return to the United States to participate in the civil trial that she eventually won.

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The Fight Over the Bundy Cows Will End as Civics 101, Not Fort Sumter II

Philip Bump, The Wire — Wed, 16 Apr 2014 10:16:13 -0400

The showdown between Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy and the Bureau of Land Management has now moved into a new phase, marked not by the armed showdown long-desired by anti-government activists, but by the government slowly bringing the grinding weight of its legal powers to bear on the admitted lawbreaker. Few people would have guessed that the most potent political fight of 2014 would involve a stand-off over livestock, but here we are.

One of the interesting aspects of the story is that it has largely flown under the radar. The Wire noted the end to the original standoff, but a quick review is in order. Last year, the government banned Bundy from grazing his cattle in a certain area, largely because Bundy refused to adhere to a 1993 stipulation meant to protect the desert tortoise. Bundy continued to let his cattle graze, and the Bureau of Land Management seized the animals. Activists rushed to Bundy's defense after authorities tased his son and he called for a "range war." Hundreds, including some who were armed, travelled to Nevada. On Saturday, they marched to where the cattle were being held and the authorities, not wanting an armed conflict, released the animals. What comes next isn't clear, but the government assured Bundy on Tuesday that the fight is not over.

Bundy wanted a fight. He encouraged an interpretation of his situation as pitting a solitary cowboy, a traditionalist, against the weight of the federal government. As Politico notes , Bundy himself rejects the authority of the federal government, adhering instead to the "sovereign state of Nevada."

The word that hung over the conflict this weekend was "Waco." The government "may come back with a lot more force like they did at Waco with the Davidians," former Rep. Ron Paul told Fox News over the weekend. There's no question that some militia members showed up ready to fight; according to one report , a militia leader was strategizing about the use of human shields. The government's decision to return the animals was seen as a victory for the anti-government crowd — and more mainstream conservative outlets.

Now the fight has moved to a new stage. The government, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid , insists that the dispute is not over. Bundy: "I don’t have a response for Harry Reid, but I have a response for every county sheriff across the United States. Disarm the federal bureaucrats." The romantic idea of cowboys on horseback defending their land from shadowy government agents holds enormous appeal for the in-vogue "Don't tread on me"/"The tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants" arm of the far right. Sean Hannity warned on Tuesday night that "something is brewing," following Reid's remarks. "[W]hat would happen if they came in the early morning hours one day to your ranch?," he asked Bundy. Bundy replied: "If that's what we've got to do, we'll just deal with you. If you've got guts enough to do it, then come on."

It's extremely unlikely that this dispute will end the way Waco did. The government has nothing but time on its hands — unlike at the Branch Davidian compound, where authorities worried about the safety of people inside. It began the slow process of leaning on Bundy in 1993; another 20 years means little to the feds. "The BLM will continue to work to resolve the matter administratively and judicially," BLM Director Neil Kornze said in a statement reported by The Hill . D.C. attorney Jonathan Emord who outlined the likely strategy: "They'll press charges against him in federal court, and they’ll try to basically bleed his ability to defend himself, and beat him up on technical grounds... They'll put him in a situation where he'll end up with a determination of liability that would be so great that he would have to sell his ranch to them to extinguish his debt."

That's a less romantic ending, if the more likely — and more legal — one. "[T]his is a nation with a 'government of laws and not of men' — and not the other way around," conservative columnist Charles C. W. Cooke writes at the National Review , "and it seems to me that this principle should not be considered null and void because one of those men happens to have an agreeable tale, a photogenic complaint, and a romantic genealogical past." Slate's Jamelle Bouie put that argument in another frame: "What if Bundy ranch were owned by a bunch of black people?" The answer, Bouie points out, is that the reaction among patriots would likely be more muted.

There are specifics to the Bundy case that make this feel like a just cause célèbre . Romanticism and a flair for patriotic drama, however, tend not to have the same sort of staying power as government bureaucracy. The Bundy situation is interesting and a good point of debate, but the peak of its revolutionary fervor has probably already passed.

( Top image via Arina P Habich / Shutterstock.com )

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An SEC Attorney Says the Agency Is Too 'Tentative,' and the Data Agree

Philip Bump, The Wire — Wed, 09 Apr 2014 10:22:37 -0400

During his farewell speech to coworkers at the Securities and Exchange Commission, trial attorney James Kidney criticized the agency for its failure to target high-level violations. The most recent data on financial institution fraud charges indicates that its hardly the only government agency that's timid about going after bad actors.

Kidney's language was unflinching. He said that the SEC "polices the broken windows on the street level and rarely goes to the penthouse floors," according to a copy his remarks obtained by Bloomberg. When penalties are levied, he said, they amount to "at most a tollbooth on the bankster turnpike." The burden of proof for an SEC fine is lower than for a criminal charge, he pointed out, saying that he didn't think "we did a very aggressive job with all the major players in the crash of ’08."

In 2011, the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University announced that the federal government was on pace for its lowest level of annual financial institution fraud prosecutions in over 10 years. "The fact that prosecutions go up or down is almost never an indication of whether that particular crime is going up or down," TRAC co-director David Burnham told the Huffington Post at the time.

TRAC's most recent data (paywalled) incorporates monthly prosecutions from 2004 to January of 2014, and the trend is clear: prosecutions continue to decline.

Even as the financial crisis unfolded and waned, fraud prosecutions on a month-by-month basis continued to drop. In January 2014, prosecutions were down 30.1 percent over January 2009. The most common charge filed last January was bank fraud, most commonly filed by the FBI.

One obvious reason for the decline in prosecutions has been the continued reduction in resources for enforcement agencies. The SEC saw a slight increase in its budget under the Ryan-Murray agreement in December — but it is still funded far below the level it saw before government sequestration kicked in.

What Kidney was talking about in his farewell speech (which, he says, didn't evoke an angry response from his peers) was the SEC's timidity in using its tools against bad actors in the financial industry. He could apparently have been talking about other agencies as well. His superiors "were more focused on getting high-paying jobs after their government service than on bringing difficult cases," in Bloomberg's summary of his remarks. And why not? Who wouldn't want a job where you're unlikely to face recriminations for bad behavior?

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Senate Report: Torture Didn't Help Capture Osama bin Laden

Philip Bump, The Wire — Mon, 31 Mar 2014 11:01:39 -0400

For those who want to defend the CIA's torture program, the link between the interrogation programs and the capture of bin Laden has been both a frequent argument and a crown jewel. But there is no link — at least, not according to congressional aides and experts familiar with the controversial Senate Intelligence Committee report that is due to be released imminently.

It has been regularly suggested that torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed led to information about a figure named Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, who provided a critical link to bin Laden. The Senate report, however, indicates that the al-Kuwaiti information only emerged well after the torture took place, the Associated Pressreports. What's more, even then it was of more limited value than has been suggested, and did not not include his real name. The CIA has also suggested that information from the torture of Abu Faraj al-Libi introduced the connection to al-Kuwaiti; the report also discredits that idea.

The supposed value of the CIA's torture program was cemented by the film Zero Dark Thirty, which opens with a scene showing the torture of a suspect known as Hassan Ghul. The aides interviewed by the AP didn't talk about the utility of Ghul's information, but California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chair of the committee that drafted the report, has previously indicated that "an unidentified 'third detainee' had provided relevant information … the day before he was subjected to harsh CIA interrogation."

Obamacare Has Two Weeks to Enroll One Million People

Philip Bump, The Wire — Tue, 18 Mar 2014 11:40:40 -0400

The Department of Health and Human Services announced on Monday that enrollments in Obamacare marketplaces have hit five million. Meaning that with two weeks until a key deadline, the administration is still a million enrollees short of its most recent goal.

Or, put another way: about 48.73 people need to enroll in an Obamacare exchange every minute until April 1 to hit the baseline of 6 million set by the Congressional Budget Office last month.

If you look at the graph of enrollments over time, you can see that without a dramatic spike in enrollments, that won't happen. Many people expected the pace of enrollments to pick up as the April 1 deadline approached; if it has picked up much, it has been a subtle increase.

The Supreme Court Could Limit Obama's Executive Action Where It Matters Most: Climate Change

Philip Bump, The Wire — Tue, 25 Feb 2014 11:15:22 -0500

Perhaps the unluckiest people in American politics are those battling climate change. On Monday, they will join allies at the Supreme Court to fight for an aspect of the EPA's ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions precisely at the moment that the national political debate has become focused on President Obama's use of his executive authority — like EPA regulations. For many reasons, the timing couldn't be worse.

The case at hand, Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA, is complicated, so a quick primer is in order. The question at stake is whether the EPA has the right to consider greenhouse gas emissions in industrial permits, and if it has the right to change the levels of pollution that it would allow.

In Massachusetts v. the United States in 2007, the Supreme Court determined that greenhouse gasses, like carbon dioxide, are pollutants, which, under the Clean Air Act, the EPA has the authority to regulate. But the agency has dragged its feet on regulating carbon emissions, in part because such regulations are tricky to develop and in part because there hasn't been much political will to do so. One aspect of that regulation involves taking greenhouse gas pollution into consideration when the EPA grants upgrade permits. Want to build out your power plant? Under the authority of that 2007 decision, the EPA can also require you to reduce your carbon emissions.

The Paper Industry is Lobbying Against Paperless Government

Philip Bump, The Wire — Mon, 17 Feb 2014 11:27:29 -0500

The surprisingly powerful paper industry has geared up to fight the inevitable and unavoidable government transition from sending out paper checks and notices to doing so electronically. It has a very "vinyl record company lobbies against MP3s" feel to it, but the thing is? It has a point.

The Washington Post describes the advocacy group Consumers for Paper Options, which has been doing media outreach, polling, and lobbying members of Congress to make a simple plea: don't move away from paper so quickly. The group got up and running in response to the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill in 2010, because of a proposal that would have required banks to put statements online. That never came to fruition.

The bigger issue for the group is how the government uses paper. The push to make government functions digital has two motivations. The first is that it seems inevitable, that just as your electricity provider and cable provider want to end paper bills and updates, so does your government provider. The second — and probably more compelling reason — is that it's cheaper. The Post's Lisa Rein points out that processing an electronic payment is more than 13 times cheaper than printing a physical check. It's a $1.16 difference that adds up when you scale it to the size of the American population.

The real legwork in Rein's report is tying this advocacy organization back to the paper lobby; specifically, to the Envelope Manufacturers Association. She asked Consumers for Paper Options director John Runyan if his clientele is paper manufacturers or the public, and he responded by saying that "the point is that a quarter of Americans do not have Internet access." After all, he said, "the glitzy new thing is to be pro-technology ... but a lot of government agencies are saying, 'We’re going electronic and the heck with it.'"

Read the full story at The Wire

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Obama Thinks Both Sochi and Working Around Congress Are Risks Worth Taking

Philip Bump, The Wire — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 10:44:47 -0500

President Obama, according to an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper , would tell friends to go to Sochi. He's interested in the marijuana "experiments" in Colorado and Washington. And he wants you to know that he doesn't want to have to act outside of Congress, but Congress needs to get it together.

The interview that aired Friday morning had other interesting tidbits — he refused to pick between Hillary-Biden in 2016 or Denver-Seattle on Sunday, for example — but it was his continued defense of executive action that's the most significant.

During his speech , Obama made clear what he'd been hinting at for a while: He would put into effect economic solutions that didn't need congressional action wherever possible — assuming that Congress itself wouldn't do so. He announced a minimum wage hike for federal workers during the speech, and on Wednesday followed up on another promise to create a new retirement savings system .

Homeland Security Blocked Information for Senators That It Already Gave to the Public

Philip Bump, The Wire — Thu, 30 Jan 2014 17:06:00 -0500

Staffers for Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn, reviewing drone flight data they'd finally received from the Border Patrol, noticed something weird. Some of the information that the agency withheld in what it provided to Coburn's Homeland Security committee was not redacted when it was given to the activist organization Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The Huffington Post's Ryan Reilly had the scoop on the letter sent by Coburn's office on behalf of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. The Department of Homeland Security, which manages Customs and Border Patrol, "appears to have chosen to withhold information from Congress which the [Justice Department] — and, we must assume, DHS — has determined was appropriate to share with the American public," it reads in part.

Last year, the EFF received a response to a Freedom of Information Act request that outlined where and when the Border Patrol had used drones to provide aerial surveillance. "EFF received the three years of flight logs, a 2010 “Concept of Operations” report about the Predator program … and other records in response to our Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the agency," it wrote.

Read the full story at The Wire.

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CIA: Maybe Dennis Rodman Works For Us, Maybe He Doesn't

Philip Bump, The Wire — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 14:13:20 -0500

If you were curious whether or not America's primary international intelligence organization asked a rather unstable former athlete to conduct a surveillance mission inside one of the most dangerous countries on Earth, we have bad news for you: It is slightly possible that they did.

Slightly. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by MuckRock, the CIA — in classic CIA fashion — would "neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence of records responsive to your request." The request was for records "pertaining to any Central Intelligence Agency relationship to, or interest with, former NBA basketball player Dennis Keith Rodman, aka 'The Worm.'" (I am very amused by MuckRock's — probably tongue-in-cheek? — inclusion of Rodman's nickname. You know, in case the CIA used it as a cover name, or just in case they needed just a bit more clarification on which Dennis K. Rodman was being referred to.) But if those records exist, we won't know any time soon.

The CIA being the CIA, of course, it would almost certainly say this about any person that you might inquire about. Wondering if Prince George works for the CIA? "Can't confirm or deny." Your boss? "Can't confirm or deny." Unless the person's role or relationship with the Agency is declassified, it is not going to answer the question of whether or not a relationship exists for obvious reasons. Otherwise, the Russians or whoever could just file FOIA requests on everyone in the world and wait for the CIA to guiltily admit who its secret agents are.

Read the full story at The Wire

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The Upside of NSA Reform Is Far Too Small for Obama to Ignore the Downside

Philip Bump, The Wire — Thu, 16 Jan 2014 10:58:38 -0500

The politics of fighting terrorism are heavily and incontrovertibly stacked against loosening surveillance systems, which is precisely why President Obama, in his speech from the Justice Department on Friday, is likely to insist that Congress share the blame.

The New York Times' Peter Baker is not the first to note how Obama's pre-2008 rhetoric is at odds with his current positions on the NSA's surveillance tools, but his report Thursday morning makes clear that the NSA leaks offered new information to the president as well. "[A]ides said Mr. Obama was surprised to learn after leaks by Edward J. Snowden … just how far the surveillance had gone," Baker writes, including that the cell phones of European leaders were being tapped by the agency. But Baker also points to two moments — reports of a potential attack at Obama's first inauguration and the attempted Christmas Day underwear bombing in 2009 — that, as long-time aide David Plouffe said, put "steel" in Obama's spine.

For the president, there is a massive imbalance between the risk and reward of rolling back the NSA's toolset. If the change to the NSA is the one that the advisory panel Obama convened recommends, the reward is Americans will know that a years-long program of aggregating information about their phone calls has been outsourced to phone companies. And the risk is that the dismantling allows a terror plot to slip through the cracks, and would make President Obama the man who allowed dozens or thousands of Americans to die on his watch — the first president in the post war-on-terror era to do so.

How Hillary Clinton Created the First Endless Presidential Campaign

Philip Bump, The Wire — Mon, 06 Jan 2014 09:03:00 -0500

Technically, Hillary Clinton isn't sure if she's running for president. Practically, a massive ecosystem of Democratic consultants and campaign hands have already swung into campaign mode for her, as a new report from Politico makes clear. Clinton's immediately recognizable name and super PAC infrastructure allows the money to keep flowing in.

Once upon a time, people who worked on presidential campaigns spent the years afterward working in the private sector or in administrations or for non-profits or on gubernatorial or Senate races. Now, with Hillary Clinton's "shadow campaign" (in Politico's Maggie Haberman's articulation), there's no need. "[T]he Obama political infrastructure is seamlessly transitioning to serve as [Clinton’s] political infrastructure,” strategist Chris Lehane told Haberman. “And [it] sends a signal to both Obama donors and operatives that it is all right to begin actively supporting the Clinton ’16 effort.”

Haberman is exhaustive in presenting the outlets already at work on Clinton 2016. There's the consulting firm Dewey Square Group, which gave Clinton and her aides an overview of how the primary campaign could work and how and when they would need to run television ads. There's Priorities USA, a super PAC linked to Hollywood's Jeffrey Katzenberg, which has been on the brink of luring Obama 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina away from Obama's own PAC, Organizing For Action. There are myriad smaller groups and consultancies that are looking to clamber aboard the already rolling gravy train.

Congress' 2014 Could Be Even Worse Than Its 2013

Philip Bump, The Wire — Thu, 02 Jan 2014 10:35:00 -0500

When Congress returns from its (hopefully relaxing!) Christmas/holiday break next week, both Senate Democrats and House Republicans expect to begin work on their policy priorities. Differing policy priorities, of course. Voters are skeptical that the federal government can get much of anything done, a new Associated Press poll reports — a skepticism that, given that this is an election year, seems very much warranted.

The New York Times reports that 2014 is slated to begin where 2012 left off in the House. Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, says he'll push for immigration reform again, considered a key move for the Republican Party given its slumping numbers with Latino voters. Boehner has hired a staffer from the office of Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, with the goal of advancing "'step by step' moves to revise immigration laws," the Times reports. This paragraph is perhaps the most telling:

The most likely legislative approach, according to lawmakers, White House officials and activists, is a push to pass legislation in the House by May or June — after most Republican lawmakers are through with their primary campaigns — with the goal of reaching a compromise that Mr. Obama could sign before the 2014 midterm election campaigns intensify next fall.

Read the full story here.

(Image via Songquan Deng/Shutterstock.com)

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Americans See Big Government as a Threat in Record Numbers

Philip Bump, The Wire — Wed, 18 Dec 2013 17:35:30 -0500

A new poll from Gallup indicates that 72 percent of Americans — including, for the first time under a Democratic president, a majority of Democrats — see the government as the biggest threat to the future of the country.

The split, including the change since President Obama took office, is remarkable. That 72 percent figure is higher than at any point since Gallup first started asking the question in 1965. "Big government" is seen as three-and-a-half times as big a threat as "big business" and 14 times the threat of "big labor."

The figure for labor, 5 percent, is a record low. The high for business was in 2002, which, Gallup notes, was "after a series of corporate scandals rocked major corporations including Enron and Tyco."

Judge Says NSA's 'Almost-Orwellian' Data Collection Likely Violates Constitution

Philip Bump, The Wire — Mon, 16 Dec 2013 17:23:05 -0500

For the first time, a public court has determined that the National Security Agency's collection of metadata on Americans' phone calls probably violates the Constitution and should be stopped.

That's the short version of a ruling on the NSA's bulk collection of phone records released by the D.C. District Court on Monday. The injunction ruling determined that the plaintiffs had standing to file a lawsuit — in other words, that they were affected by the NSA's data collection — and that a court would likely find that the collection violated the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. Given that the plaintiffs suffered "irreparable harm" from the data collection, the court determined that the data collection should be halted — though that order was withheld, pending appeal.

The decision, responding to a lawsuit initiated by Judicial Watch's Larry Klayman, was written by U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon, a George W. Bush appointee. Leon doesn't mince words in his critique, suggesting that the technology involved renders past judicial determinations inapplicable. The NSA gathers on-going data on phone calls placed and their length, the sort of thing that once needed to be done on a line-by-line basis.

"[T]he almost-Orwellian technology that enables the Government to store and analyze the phone metadata of every telephone user in the United States," Leon writes, "is unlike anything that could have been conceived in 1979," when the Supreme Court case of Smith v. Maryland first allowed the government to collect such data. "The notion that the Government could collect similar data on hundreds of millions of people and retain that data for a five-year period, updating it with new data every day in perpetuity, was at best, in 1979, the stuff of science fiction."

Here's What NSA Wanted Its Employees to Talk About at Thanksgiving

Philip Bump, The Wire — Tue, 03 Dec 2013 07:04:45 -0500

It wasn't only Obamacare supporters that wanted people to talk to their families about political issues over Thanksgiving. The National Security Agency did, too, even going so far as to offer its employees some tips on how to defend the beleaguered secret agency.

The document obtained by FireDogLake's Kevin Gosztola includes five main subject areas, each of which itself has a series of sub-bullets. For anyone who has been paying close attention to the debate over the NSA, the arguments are nothing new — they obey the law, they have robust oversight, they prevent terror attacks, they protect freedom.

But NSA has frequently complained that its defenses aren't reaching the public, an argument belied by evidence that the media has a pro-grovernment bias. So, the talking points.

Shutdown Helps McAuliffe Win in Virginia

Philip Bump, The Wire — Wed, 06 Nov 2013 09:29:04 -0500

The Virginia gubernatorial race was expected to be one of Tuesday's closest. But it ended up far closer than predicted, giving both Republicans and Democrats fodder in their bigger picture and premature arguments over 2014.

After the problems with Healthcare.gov came to light, the Republican candidate, Ken Cuccinelli, took to calling the race a "referendum on Obamacare." His argument: If you don't like Obamacare, vote for me. On the other side, allies of the Democratic candidate, Terry McAuliffe, more subtly suggested that the race was actually about the shutdown, and, more broadly, the conservative Tea Party activists that prompted it. Cuccinelli fed the flames of this argument when he blamed the shutdown for this dropping poll numbers earlier in October; he later back-tracked.

Even before the race was called, Republican pundits declared that one of those arguments was correct: the one about Obamacare. On CNN, Newt Gingrich and The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol riffed on the margin of defeat for Cuccinelli (which will probably end up being in the range of three points or so) as having been closer than expected precisely because of the Obamacare issue. Gingrich, for example, noted polls showing a double-digit McAuliffe lead last month, suggesting that the narrow actual margin of victory indicated that Americans were turning against the healthcare policy. In his concession speech, Cuccinelli made a similar point. (While it's true that some polls showed a wide lead for McAuliffe, most showed a fairly consistent six- or seven-point spread.) One set of exit polls showed that there wasn't a strong link between Obamacare and the candidates, however: 53 percent of voters oppose the policy, far more than gave Cuccinelli their votes.

Read more on The Atlantic Wire.

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Obama's Approval Nears a New Low, Thanks to Congress

Philip Bump, The Wire — Wed, 06 Nov 2013 09:11:42 -0500

Barack Obama is almost the least popular he's been since he took office. But don't blame him. Blame the economy. Or, better yet: Blame Congress.

Every day, the Gallup company publishes a three-day average of its polling on the approval rating of the president. On Tuesday, that number hit 39 percent -- fewer than four in ten Americans approve of the job Obama is doing. More than half (obviously) disapprove. He has a net approval -- percent that approves minus the percent that doesn't -- of -14 percent. That's not good.

Over the course of his presidency, Obama has seen five broad trends. The high approval following his election lasted until about March of 2010. It stayed flat for a while, dipping suddenly in the Spring of 2011. The two lowest points came in August and October of that year, as the economy remained flat. His approval started to climb back up through the election, but began a new downward slide last December.

Read more on The Atlantic Wire.

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TSA Employee Killed in Shooting at Los Angeles International Airport

Philip Bump, The Wire — Fri, 01 Nov 2013 15:35:00 -0400

A shooting incident Friday morning at Los Angeles International Airport left one TSA employee dead, and at least two others wounded. One shooter is in custody, according to the LAPD, though there are conflicting reports on the shooter's status. In a press conference, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said that the situation at LAX is now a "static" one. Law enforcement officials said that they believe the incident was limited only to Terminal 3 of the airport, and to the single gunman in custody.

What We Know So Far

The victims: A spokesman for the American Federation of Government Employees confirmed to the AP that a TSA employee was killed in the incident. The UCLA Medical Center said in a statement to NBC that the hospital took in three male victims from the shooting. Two are in fair condition and one is in critical condition. The LA Fire Department has "treated" seven people. Six were taken to hospitals, according to interim fire chief Jim Feathersone. The LAFD didn't elaborate on the condition of those hospitalized.
The shooter: There's conflicting information out there on the status of the shooter. The LAPD released a statement clarifying that law enforcement officers "engaged the suspect," who was taken into custody, a story similar to that from Patrick Gannon, Chief of Airport Police, who said that officers followed and engaged the gunman in Terminal 3. Some reports, from NBC and the LA Times, suggest that the gunman may have been killed by law enforcement. According to Gannon, the shooter used an "assault rifle."

Read updates on The Atlantic Wire.

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Anonymous U.S. Officials Point Fingers at France and Spain on Surveillance

Philip Bump, The Wire — Tue, 29 Oct 2013 14:36:02 -0400

The Wall Street Journal reports that the widespread surveillance of residents of several European nations occurred with the facilitation of the countries themselves -- at least according to U.S. officials. The report emerged less than an hour before the head of the National Security Agency was due to testify before Congress on the agency's surveillance operations.

The massive scale of the data collection -- tens of millions of phone calls tracked in France and Spain -- elicited an outcry of opposition from those countries and activists in the United States. But now the Journal cites anonymous officials claiming that the NSA only analyzed phone data that had already been gathered by those countries' intelligence agencies.

The U.S. wants to correct the record about the extent of NSA spying but doing so in this case would require it to expose its allies' intelligence operations, which could compromise cooperation in the future as well as ongoing intelligence efforts.

U.S. officials said the Snowden-provided documents had been misinterpreted and actually show phone records that were collected by French and Spanish intelligence agencies, and then shared with the NSA, according to officials briefed on those discussions.

Former NSA Chief Trashes Obama Administration During Amtrak Ride

Philip Bump, The Wire — Fri, 25 Oct 2013 09:45:23 -0400

Tom Matzzie, a former MoveOn staffer, was riding the train on Thursday afternoon, when he recognized another passenger: former NSA chief Michael Hayden. Hayden was giving off-the-record interviews by phone, snippets of which Matzzie dutifully reported out on Twitter.

Former NSA spy boss Michael Hayden on Acela behind me blabbing "on background as a former senior admin official" Sounds defensive. — Tom Matzzie (@tommatzzie) October 24, 2013	Hayden was bragging about rendition and black sites a minute ago. — Tom Matzzie (@tommatzzie) October 24, 2013
Michael Hayden on Acela giving reporters disparaging quotes about admin. "Remember, just refer as former senior admin" #exNSAneedsadayjob — Tom Matzzie (@tommatzzie) October 24, 2013	On Acela: Hayden's comments to press were clearly about NSA spying on foreign allies. #haydenacela — Tom Matzzie (@tommatzzie) October 24, 2013

But then!

On Acela: phone ringing. I think the jig is up. Maybe somebody is telling him I'm here. Do I hide?
— Tom Matzzie (@tommatzzie) October 24, 2013

New call. I am totally busted I think.
— Tom Matzzie (@tommatzzie) October 24, 2013

Matzzie's reports ring true. Hayden has been very, very active in rising to the defense of the organization that he led for the first Bush administration. (In the second, he was Director of National Intelligence.) Last month, for example, he told an audience that terrorists were into GMail.

Matzzie is no worse for the wear of ratting on one of the most powerful intelligence officials in United States history, reporting that he has not yet been spirited away to a black site. Let this be an object lesson to public figures talking to reporters on background: People nearby who can overhear are very much allowed to ignore any stipulations about hiding your identity. And it's fun when they do.

Update, 5:00 p.m.: Apparently Hayden didn't really mind.

Win pic.twitter.com/tsJHqjv1LM
— Tom Matzzie (@tommatzzie) October 24, 2013

Despite:

There is a faint smell of sulfur on the train. #Haydenacela
— Tom Matzzie (@tommatzzie) October 24, 2013

Update, 5:20: It turns out that Hayden's office gave him a heads up.

On the pic. His office called him and then he graciously offered me an interview. We talked around the 4th amendment and foreign spying.
— Tom Matzzie (@tommatzzie) October 24, 2013

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Obamacare Got More Popular During the Shutdown

Philip Bump, The Wire — Wed, 23 Oct 2013 09:50:49 -0400

A key argument of proponents of this month's government shutdown was that Americans oppose Obamacare. On the net, they do. But the shutdown itself may have actually boosted the law's poll numbers, according to a new survey from Gallup.

The polling company completed a survey evaluating public perceptions of the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. On the whole, Americans still oppose the law, which is set to go into full effect in January. But: slightly less than they did in August.

The most interesting details are buried a little bit deeper. For example, Gallup compared the August and October responses by political party. Republicans have always strongly opposed the law, but their opposition only grew by 2 percentage points over the course of the shutdown. Democrats have always strongly supported the law -- but the net approval rose 14 points over the course of the shutdown. Most disconcerting to Republicans should be that third number: opposition to the law dropped by 8 percentage points among independents.

Read more on The Atlantic Wire.

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EPA Shutdown Is Great, Say Senate Environment Committee Republicans

Philip Bump, The Wire — Tue, 15 Oct 2013 17:20:53 -0400

Sen. David Vitter, not content to be the most-hated boss in Capitol Hill history, apparently gave his thumbs up to a post on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee website outlining the various ways it's great that most of the EPA has been furloughed.

The post, which appears on the "Blogs" section of the minority caucus' portion of the site, is meant to be the sort of fun, hip numbered list so popular with the kids these days. Or maybe it's supposed to be the sort of top 10 list made popular by David Letterman, the late-night hose so popular with the aging adult population these days. Either way, it provides 10 reasons that "the government shutdown isn't all bad."

For example:

10. Approximately 15,000 EPA employees are furloughed, making it less likely fake CIA agents at EPA will be ripping off the taxpayer
8. Fewer bureaucrats at the EPA makes it less likely that they'll make up science on new regulations
3. Far-left environmentalists prove themselves hypocrites again: They criticize continuing oil and gas production on federal lands during the shutdown but issue no call to halt wind turbines
1. Richard Windsor has been furloughed-for good!

Read more on The Atlantic Wire.

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Let Us Now Pity Congress, Which Must Go Without Ice Cream in the Shutdown

Philip Bump, The Wire — Fri, 04 Oct 2013 16:32:48 -0400

Earlier this week, we shared our map of the government shutdown's effects by state, replete with curtailed food programs and cuts to Head Start programs. Now, a more harrowing tale: How the shutdown is affecting the White House and members of Congress.

The White House is serving turkey chili every day.

The New York Times reports that the government shutdown has reduced the staff at the executive mansion from more than 1,700 to fewer than 500. And many of those furloughed (or, in the parlance, not "excepted" from the shutdown) are service employees.

Which means that lunches aren't quite the affairs that they once were. "No more soup of the day, according to those still working in the kitchen," the paper notes. "To simplify, it will be turkey chili as long as the shutdown lasts."

Congressmembers have to eat boxed lunches — without ice cream!

The White House isn't the only place suffering from more limited lunch options. From Politico:

Another difference lawmakers might notice? Their lunches have been scaled back as well. The usually buffet-style lunches with ice cream were instead box lunches for the Senate GOP on Tuesday. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia said Senate Democrats had boxed lunches as well.

There are only two cafeterias still open on the Hill! But it gets worse.

Read more on The Atlantic Wire.

(Image via pilipphoto/Shutterstock.com)

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