Mukasey's Justice Department Codifies COINTELPRO Into FBI "Ground Rules"

Reprehensor Sat, 09/13/2008 - 11:09am

COINTELPRO

Every once in a while, the Washington Post actually prints something of note. Yesterday, they published this article, Rule Changes Would Give FBI Agents Extensive New Powers. Previously, the FBI was required to have a case before they started screwing around with you. Under Mukasey's "New Rules", we now have a situation ripe for abuse. The Justice Department is currently working out the wording for placing "undisclosed participants" in organizations;

The changes would give the FBI's more than 12,000 agents the ability at a much earlier stage to conduct physical surveillance, solicit informants and interview friends of people they are investigating without the approval of a bureau supervisor. Such techniques are currently available only after FBI agents have opened an investigation and developed a reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed or that a threat to national security is developing...

The overhaul touches on several sensitive areas. It would allow, for example, agents to interview people in the United States about foreign intelligence cases without warrants or prior approval of their supervisors. It also would rewrite 1976 guidelines established after Nixon-era abuses that restrict the FBI's authority to intervene in times of civil disorder and to infiltrate opposition groups...

Monitoring conversations between informants who agree to wear recording devices and subjects of investigations, which now requires the permission of an assistant U.S. attorney, could occur without a prosecutor's approval...

The new approach would relax some of those requirements and would expand the investigative techniques that agents could use to include deploying informants...

Policy guidance for FBI agents and informants who work as "undisclosed participants" in organizations is still being written, the officials said yesterday.

Just in time for the November elections.

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3 votes

Mukasey's BFF Silverstein - it is a small world after-all

Google Search:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=mukasey+silverstein&aq=f&oq=

One return:

As Judge Leaves for Law Firm, His Legacy Is Remembered

http://www.nysun.com/new-york/as-judge-leaves-for-law-firm-his-legacy-is...

"The case that first secured Judge Mukasey a lasting reputation was the 1995 trial of 10 militant Muslims who were convicted of a plot to blow up the United Nations and other landmarks around the city. Following the trial — which lasted the better part of a year — Judge Mukasey sentenced the central defendant, the terrorist-sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and another man, El Sayyid Nosair, to life in prison."

"The decision that Judge Mukasey handed down for Mr. Padilla had two components, one of which favored the government and the other Mr. Padilla. He ruled that President Bush did have the authority to hold Mr. Padilla as an enemy combatant without charging him for a crime. But he also ruled that the government must allow Mr. Padilla to see his attorneys. When the government came back and argued that allowing Mr. Padilla — who was being held in a military brig in South Carolina — to meet with his attorneys would harm their interrogation of him, Judge Mukasey reaffirmed his original order."

"Judge Mukasey has also presided over high-profile civil cases, including World Trade Center developer Larry Silverstein's battle with the insurers of the trade center. "

"Born in the Bronx, Judge Mukasey went to work as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan during the 1970s, rising to become chief of the official corruption unit. He befriended Rudolph Giuliani there and is the subject of a passage in Mr. Giuliani's book describing how the two would prepare for trial together, with Mr. Mukasey playing the role of a witness while Mr. Giuliani practiced his cross-examinations. As a federal judge, Mr. Mukasey swore in Mayor-elect Giuliani in 1994 and 1998."

Conyers Asks Mukasey About Waterboarding