Whew!

Good. Now I feel much better. We can all go home and crack open a beer, and relax, knowing that there's an invisible, internal "oversight office within DOJ's National Security Division".

Now I can get some sleep and no be scared sh**less that a bunch of pompus, moronic, hillbilly, jesus-freaks are running the government and DOJ.

This secret, unaccountable, internal solution is just what we've all been waiting for.

What was the date for razing Washington DC again?

Whaaaat?
"in a letter to Vice President Dick Cheney and congressional leaders"

What's wrong with this picture?

It is taught as fact at the US Army Management Staff College that internal investigations will always return the result desired by the official who initiates the investigation.

Not that that's news to anyone who is paying attention, but given that our government teaches this to its own senior staff and given this administration's conduct thus far, it is difficult to believe that this new oversight office is anything except abject treachery designed to strengthen and hide the abuses.

If the compliance is handled in the same manner as the requirement that the office of the VP handle national security information correctly.

On the other hand, handling the information in an organized and auditable manner can at least provide a basis for assessing damages to US national security if an investigator from the CIA, DIA, Treasury secret service, DOJ, or DOS inadverttantly initiates an investigation into an investigator of another agency where credentialing information was not shared, or where a foreign national intentionally as an act of a foreign nation state uses the institutions with these powers to hinder, harrass, or obstruct in an intentional manner the lawful activities of a US citizen.

Imagine the debacle of the FBI harrasing a political assylum individual granted protection by the CIA or DIA as a retaliatory act of a foreign government, or a rogue element within that government by the FBI?

While it is not too late to put some adults in charge, the abuses that are pre-existing need to be handled with NSL's where the FBI admidts damages made, makes payments of damages, and seals that settlement in accordance with NARA guidlines and an eventual records disposition to unclassified.

see a very brief abstract here:

Vice President Dick Cheney and congressional Democrats are sparring over the vice president's refusal to comply with a 2003 presidential executive order that requires all agencies and the executive branch to protect classified material.

The skirmish is the latest in a long battle between Congress and the Bush White House -- particularly Cheney's office -- over the administration's campaign to expand the powers of the executive branch and increase the amount of information labeled as classified.

In a letter to Cheney on Thursday, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., questioned ''both the legality and wisdom'' of the vice president claiming an exemption from the order, noting recent controversies involving members of Cheney's staff and classified information.

Former Cheney Chief of Staff I. Lewis ''Scooter'' Libby was convicted in March of perjury and obstruction of justice in connection with a federal investigation into the identification, in a leak to the media, of CIA undercover operative Valerie Plame.

(what the fvck is this???????)

In May 2006, Leandro Aragoncillo, an aide in the vice president's office, admitted in federal court that he stole classified U.S. intelligence information and passed it on to officials plotting a coup in the Philippines.

http://www.miamiherald.com/509/story/147580.html

When you see the report, I'd like to know if the IG made recommendations that these offices be formed up? Or, are these offices an attempt to make IG functions more difficult, or to replace IG function altogether. To trust DOJ or specifically FBI to control themselves regarding NSLs (or anything else, for that matter) is foolhardy.

Is anyone keeping a list of all the investigations and internally appointed insspectors that Bush. Co. has
created?
Like a black hole, ain't it?

These guys cannot be trusted. It doesn't matter what they say anymore, they are just trying to by time while the hatch some other hefarious plot.

The timing of this is in a word, interesting. Given the fact that just two days ago the revelation occurred that we now have documented evidence that Alberto Gonzales lied to congress about this very subject. It is all so juvenile.