Justice Dept

Docs in the news

Lots of document-related news to catch up on..

* Justice Dept releases nine Bush-era memos regarding legalities involving detainees, rendition, eavesdropping, using the military within the US, and that pesky thing called free speech: “First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully.”

The memos are here. NY Times article here. ProPublica memo depository here.

* CIA admits in court that it destroyed 92 videotapes of interrogations [ACLU]

* “Major RAND study with 300 interviews: Intelligence Operations and Metrics in Iraq and Afghanistan” [Wikileaks]

* Obama Justice Dept helps hide Bush White House emails [AP]

* The White House’s missing documents [Politico]

* British Justice Secretary Vetoes FOIA Release of Iraq War Discussions [Antiwar.com]

* “Navy classifies ship inspection reports” [Navy Times]

* DHS Inspector General: Over 100,000 deportees had children in US [AP]

* Valenti’s Sexuality Was Topic For FBI [WaPo]

Related: “Bill Moyers Responds to Media Probe of His ’Homo Hunting’ Past” [Boston Edge]

* Canadian Government posts 9,500 files on UFOs [Library and Archives Canada]

* Canada: “Weird warnings on FOI material” [Tyee]

Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel Belatedly Releasing Some Opinions

A friend of The Memory Hole sends along the following, pasted in below. Not only is the Justice Dept’s Office of Legal Counsel – which gives legal advice to the President (and the rest of the Exec branch) – surprisingly releasing some of its zealously guarded opinions, some of these opinions have to do with the conduct of the Bush administration regarding Iraq and the “war on terrorism.” (For background on the reluctance of the Office of Legal Counsel to even acknowledge its opinions – never mind actually release them – see “Current, Future Justice Officials Clash Over OLC Proposal” at Secrecy News.)

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It is fairly surprising how the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel is suddenly plopping out a series of its legal opinions at the eleventh hour after claiming for months and years that these opinions — and even the titles of these opinions — were inexorably and entirely classified and restricted.  Some opinions outlined matters of presidential authority and jurisdiction.  In the past eight years, the OLC has released almost none of its opinions until fairly recently when it became a matter of Congressional concern.  This is in extraordinarily stark contrast to prior administrations that published a substantial fraction of its formal legal opinions.

The opinions below were just added to the DOJ OLC website. [All links are to PDF files.]

* LEGALITY OF THE USE OF MILITARY COMMISSIONS TO TRY TERRORISTS (November 6, 2001) (added 1/08/09)

* WHETHER FALSE STATEMENTS OR OMISSIONS IN IRAQ’S WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION DECLARATION WOULD CONSTITUTE A “FURTHER MATERIAL BREACH” UNDER U.N. SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION 1441 (December 7, 2002) (added 1/08/09)

* EFFECT OF A RECENT UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION ON THE AUTHORITY OF THE PRESIDENT UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW TO USE MILITARY FORCE AGAINST IRAQ (November 8, 2002) (added 1/08/09)

* AUTHORITY OF THE PRESIDENT UNDER DOMESTIC AND INTERNATIONAL LAW TO USE MILITARY FORCE AGAINST IRAQ (October 23, 2002) (added 1/08/09)

* STATUS OF TALIBAN FORCES UNDER ARTICLE 4 OF THE THIRD GENEVA CONVENTION OF 1949 (February 7, 2002)  (added 1/08/09)

* “PROTECTED PERSON” STATUS IN OCCUPIED IRAQ UNDER THE FOURTH GENEVA CONVENTION (March 18, 2004) (added 1/08/09)

* ASSERTION OF EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE OVER COMMUNICATIONS REGARDING EPA’S OZONE AIR QUALITY STANDARDS AND CALIFORNIA’S GREENHOUSE GAS WAIVER REQUEST (June 19, 2008) (added 1/08/09)

And this one added a week earlier:

* ASSERTION OF EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE CONCERNING THE SPECIAL COUNSEL’S INTERVIEWS OF THE VICE PRESIDENT AND SENIOR WHITE HOUSE STAFF (July 15, 2008)  (added December 29, 2008)

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[exclusive] Justice Dept/IRS Money-Laundering Manual

The Memory hole has obtained and scanned “Investigation and Prosecution of Illegal Money Laundering: A Guide to the Bank Secrecy Act.” Originally written and published in 1983 by the Criminal Division of the Justice Department, this is the apparently identical version published by the IRS for its staff.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE DOCUMENT [PDF | 288 pp | 12 meg]

It was sent to Federal Depository Libraries 25 years ago, but the IRS and Justice have long since stopped voluntarily releasing publications that reveal their tactics and inner workings. This manual doesn’t appear to have been posted online until now.

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Some newly released docs

Justice Dept: Amerithrax Court Documents [DOJ]

Pentagon: “The Worldwide Military Command and Control System, A Historical Perspective (1960-1977), September 1980″ (25MB) [DOD FOIA site]

Justice Inspector General: “Report to Congress on Implementation of Section 1001 of the USA PATRIOT Act, August 2008″ [DOJ IG]

Dept of Homeland Security: “Updated Status Report from DHS Regarding Deficiencies in Implementation of Executive Order 13,392, “Improving Agency Disclosure of Information”, (PDF, 3 pages – 1.18 MB)” [DHS FOIA site]

Several new audits from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstructions [SIGIR]

[DEA] Yanked Inspector General Report Reposted

On this page, the Justice Department’s Inspector General posts some of its reports concerning the Drug Enforcement Administration. In early June 2008 one of the reports suddenly went missing – the PDF and HTML versions, and all mention of the report, simply were gone.

The Memory Hole has obtained this pulled report: “Follow-Up Review of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Efforts to Control the Diversion of Controlled Pharmaceuticals, Evaluation and Inspections Report I-2006-004, July 2006″

CLICK HERE FOR THE REPORT [PDF | 3.25 meg]

Excerpt:

The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) conducted this follow-up review to assess the DEA’s actions to control pharmaceutical diversion since our previous review in October 2002….

Despite these positive actions, we identified several continuing concerns. We found that although the need for special agent assistance in diversion investigations had increased significantly since our previous review, the time spent by special agents assisting diversion investigations still constitutes a small share of their total investigative effort.8 In addition, we found that the DEA still had not resolved the complicated issue of providing law enforcement authority for its diversion investigators, although it is actively pursuing the matter. Further, we found that few DEA special agents have received diversion control training beyond the 2-hour module provided during basic agent training. In addition, the support provided by intelligence analysts to diversion groups in the field has continued to be limited, and intelligence analysts still received minimal diversion control training.

With respect to the DEA’s Internet efforts, we examined several of the intelligence, technological, and investigative tools that are part of the DEA’s operational strategy, including the Online Investigations Project (OIP), telephone and online hotlines, undercover equipment, and training in conducting Internet diversion investigations. We found that the OIP, under development since 2001, has become a valuable investigative tool even though it cannot automatically identify web sites with the highest volume of suspect pharmaceutical sales as originally intended. In addition, since 2002 the DEA has established telephone and online hotlines for reporting suspicious Internet pharmacies. However, these hotlines have yielded few leads that resulted in diversion investigations. Further, while the DEA has started to provide undercover equipment to its diversion groups, as of May 2006 most diversion groups still did not have this equipment. And while over half of the 482 diversion investigators have received training in Internet investigations, most have not received the types of specialized training that diversion investigators said would prove useful for conducting Internet investigations.