Even more evidence of Bush's spying
More evidence of Bush's spying
Why the White House can no longer hide the truth about its warrantless surveillance of Americans.
By Jon B. Eisenberg
Sep. 12, 2008 | For almost three years now, the Bush administration has insisted that the nation's security depends on keeping secret a part of its war on terror that was first exposed in the media back in 2005: its extralegal spying inside the United States. Bush lawyers have relied on the state secrets privilege to block numerous lawsuits challenging the administration's reported spying on Americans and others without warrants, claiming that even to acknowledge such allegations would put the country's security in jeopardy.
A cornerstone case in this legal battle is that of the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation Inc., an Oregon-based charity group, in which there appears to be the most known evidence of such spying. And, as it turns out, one need look no further than the FBI's official Web site to find irrefutable evidence that surveillance of the group occurred -- and that the government's persistent claims of maintaining secrecy about it have been spurious.
I am an attorney on the legal team representing Al-Haramain and two lawyers, Wendell Belew and Asim Ghafoor, who represented Al-Haramain in 2004 when the FBI was investigating the charity to determine whether it should be declared a terrorist organization. Al-Haramain, Belew and Ghafoor have sued the Bush administration for warrantless electronic surveillance of telephone conversations between Belew and Ghafoor and one of Al-Haramain's directors during March and April 2004.
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