Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (61 page)

92
. Hitchens, “Worst-Case Mentality.”

93
. According to Leonard David, some poor nations are talking about “debris-creating weapons.” See “The Clutter Above,”
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
61, no. 4 (July-August 2005), pp. 32-37. On the effects of a nuclear explosion in space, see Department of Defense, Defense Threat Reduction Agency,
High Altitude Nuclear Detonations Against Low Earth Orbit Satellites
(Washington, DC: April 2001); Nick Schwellenbach, “EMPty Threat?”
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
61, no. 55 (September/October 2005), pp. 50-57. Schwellenbach is writing about the electromagnetic pulse that is released by all nuclear explosions.

7:
THE CRISIS OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC

1
. Edith Hamilton,
Mythology
(1940; repr., New York: Mentor Books, 1953), p. 88.

2
. George F. Will,
Washington Post,
“Having the President Observe the Law,”
San Diego Union-Tribune,
February 16, 2006; James Ridgeway, “The Bush
Family Coup,”
Village Voice,
December 30, 2005. See also Federation of American Scientists, Project on Governmental Secrecy, “Confronting the White House’s ’Monarchical Doctrine,’”
Secrecy News,
February 16, 2006.

3
. James Madison, “Virginia Resolutions,” December 21, 1798,
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_speechsl9.html
.

4
. James Madison, from a letter to W. T. Barry, August 4, 1822,
http://www.matisse.net/files/madison.html
.

5
. “Bill Moyers on the Freedom of Information Act,”
Now,
Public Broadcasting Service, April 5, 2002,
http://www.pbs.org/now/printable/transcript_moyers4_print.html
.

6
. See Daniel Ellsberg,
Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers
(New York: Viking, 2002); and Johnson, Review of Ellsberg,
Secrets,
in
London Review of Books,
February 6, 2003, pp. 7-9,
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n03/print/john04_.html
.

7
. James Bovard, “Uncle Sam’s Iron Curtain of Secrecy,” Future of Freedom Foundation, August 1, 2005,
http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0504c.asp.

8
. Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith, “War Crimes Made Easy: How the Bush Administration Legalized Intelligence Deceptions, Assassinations, and Aggressive War,”
TomDispatch.com,
, December 6, 2005, p. 3,
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=41419
.

9
. Ruth Rosen, “The Day Ashcroft Censored Freedom of Information,”
San Francisco Chronicle,
January 7, 2002,
http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views02/0108-04.htm
.

10
. Quoted by Brecher and Smith, “War Crimes Made Easy.” See also Adam Clymer, “Bush Expands Government Secrecy,”
New York Times,
January 3, 2003.

11
. Bovard, “Uncle Sam’s Iron Curtain.”

12
. Wikipedia, “Executive Order 13233,” February 12, 2006,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13233
.

13
. Quoted in Editorial, “An Executive Order Hiding Presidential Papers,”
San Francisco Chronicle,
November 11, 2001.

14
. Federation of American Scientists, “Statement of Richard Reeves on Presidential Records,” April 11, 2002,
http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2002/041102reeves.html
.

15
. Quoted by Bovard, “Uncle Sam’s Iron Curtain.”

16
. Ibid.

17
. Noah Feldman, “Who Can Check the President?”
New York Times Magazine,
January 8, 2006, p. 55.

18
. Quoted by Ridgeway, “Bush Family Coup.”

19
. Quoted by Caroline Daniel, “Cheney Leads Fight for Presidential Power,”
Financial Times,
December 14, 2005.

20
. Quoted by Linda Feldmann, “Tug of War over Presidential Powers,”
Christian Science Monitor,
December 22, 2005,
http://csmonitor.com/2005/1222/p01s03-uspo.htm
.

21
. Quoted by Thomas E. Woods Jr., “All the President’s Power,”
American Conservative,
January 30, 2006,
http://www.amconmag.com/2006/2006_0l_30/print/coverprint.html
.

22
. R. Jeffrey Smith and Dan Eggen, “Gonzales Helped Set the Course for Detainees,”
Washington Post,
January 5, 2005; Daniel, “Cheney Leads Fight”; Jane Mayer, “The Memo: How an Internal Effort to Ban the Abuse and
Torture of Detainees Was Thwarted,”
New Yorker,
February 27, 2006,
http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/060227fa_fact
. For texts of the memo and other documents, see Human Rights First, “U.S. Government Memos on Torture and International Law,”
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/us_lawVetn/gov_rep/gov_memo_intlaw.htm
.

23
. Quoted by Dana Milbank, “In Cheney’s Shadow, Counsel Pushes the Conservative Cause,”
Washington Post,
October 11, 2004. There are altogether four Yoo memos available to the public that assert a dictatorial power for the president: (1) September 21, 2001, arguing that 9/11 allowed the president to take “measures which in less troubled conditions could be seen as infringements of individual liberties”; (2) September 25, 2001, in which Yoo says Congress could not put “limits on the president’s determinations as to any terrorist threat, the amount of military force to be used in response, or the method, timing, and nature of the response. These decisions, under our Constitution, are for the president alone to make”; (3) January 9, 2002, a Yoo memo saying that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to American prisoners even though ratified treaties are, according to the Constitution, the “supreme law of the land”; and (4) the Torture Memo of August 1, 2002. See Sidney Blumenthal, “The Law Is King,”
Salon,
December 22, 2005,
http://fairuse.laccesshost.com/news2/blumenthal-lawking.html.
For a detailed analysis of the executive branch’s defense of torture, see Tom Engelhardt, “George Orwell Meet ... Franz Kafka,”
TomDispatch.com,
, June 13, 2004,
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=1494
.

24
. Massimo Calabresi, “Wartime Power Play,”
Time,
February 5, 2006.

25
. Bruce Schneier, “Unchecked Presidential Power,”
StarTribune.com
,
December 21, 2005,
http://www.startribune.com/dynamic/mobile_story.php?story=5793639
.

26
. Dan Farber, “The Case Against Presidential Supremacy,”
San Diego Union-Tribune,
January 15, 2006.

27
. 343 US 579; Mayer, “The Memo.”

28
. For details of the FISA, see Johnson,
Sorrows of Empire,
pp. 295-98.

29
. See Electronic Privacy Information Center, “Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Orders, 1979-2004,”
http://www.epic.org/privacy/wiretap/stats/fisa_stats.html
.

30
. Paul Craig Roberts, “A Criminal Administration,”
Antiwar.com
, January 2, 2006.

31
. James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, “Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts,”
New York Times,
December 16, 2005. See also Aziz Huq (School of Law, New York University), “At the NSA, the Enemy Is Us,”
TomPaine.com
,
March 2, 2006,
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/03/02/at_the_nsa_the_enemy_is_us.php
.

32
. Roberts, “Criminal Administration.”

33
. Blumenthal, “Law Is King.”

34
. Thomas Powers, “The Biggest Secret,”
New York Review of Books,
February 23, 2006, pp. 9-12.

35
. Quoted by Amy Goodman, “Total Information Awareness Lives On Inside the National Security Agency,”
Democracy Now,
February 27, 2006,
http://www.democracynow.org/print.pl?sid=06/02/27/1519235.

36
. Walter Pincus, “Pentagon’s Intelligence Authority Widens,”
Washington Post,
December 19, 2005,
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2005/12/18/AR2005121801006_pf.html
. See also Tom Engelhardt, “Proliferation Wars in the Intelligence Community,”
TomDispatch.com,
, May 30, 2006,
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=87452.

37
. Shane Harris, “TIA Lives On,”
National Journal,
February 23, 2006; John W. Dean, “Why Should Anyone Worry about Whose Communications Bush and Cheney Are Intercepting If It Helps to Find Terrorists?”
FindLaw.com
, February 24, 2006,
http://writ.corporate.findlaw.com/dean/20060224.html;
Shane Harris, “Signals and Noise,”
National Journal,
June 17, 2006,
http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/0619nj1.htm
.

38
. John W. Dean, “The Problem with Presidential Signing Statements: Their Use and Misuse by the Bush Administration,”
FindLaw.com
, January 13, 2006,
http://writ.findlaw.com/dean/20060113.html.

39
. Quoted by Charlie Savage, “Bush Could Bypass New Torture Ban,”
Boston Globe,
January 4, 2006,
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/printer_010406A.shtml
. See also Savage, “Bush Challenges Hundreds of Laws,”
Boston Globe,
April 30, 2006,
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/04/30/bush_challenges_hundreds_of_laws/
.

40
. Dean, “Presidential Signing Statements.”

41
. Aziz Huq, “Constitutional License,”
TomPaine.com
,
January 24, 2006,
http://www.tompaine.com/print/constitutional_license.php
.

42
. See Alfred W. McCoy, “Why the McCain Torture Ban Won’t Work,”
Tom
Dispatch.com
,
February 8, 2006,
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=57336
.

43
. Quoted by Savage, “Bush Could Bypass Torture Ban.”

44
. Anthony Legouranis, “Tortured Logic: What I Learned as a Military Interrogator in Iraq,”
New York Times,
February 28, 2006.

45
. Feldman, “Who Can Check the President?”

46
. Al Gore, “U.S. Constitution in Grave Danger,” January 16, 2006,
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/printer_011606Y.shtml.

47
. See Chalmers Johnson, “The Military-Industrial Man,”
TomDispatch.com,
, September 14, 2004,
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=1818;
and “My Congressman Stands for Money, Not for Me—And, What’s Even Worse, There’s No Way I Can Get Rid of Him,”
Los Angeles Times,
September 26, 2004.

48
. Matt Kelley and Jim Drinkard, “Secret Military Spending Gets Little Oversight,”
USA Today,
November 8, 2005; Paul Sisson, “Defense Dollars for Everyone,”
North County Times
(San Diego), July 17, 2005, p. E5.

49
. Onell R. Soto, “Rep. Cunningham Resigns; Took $2.4 Million in Bribes,”
San Diego Union-Tribune,
November 29, 2005; Soto, “Feds Seek 10 Years for Cunningham,”
San Diego Union-Tribune,
February 18, 2006; Finlay Lewis, Jerry Kammer, and Joe Cantlupe, “Contractor Admits Bribing Cunningham,”
San Diego Union-Tribune,
February 25, 2006.

50
. Laura Rozen,” ’Duke’ of Deception,”
American Prospect,
February 2006,
http://www.prospect.org/web/printfriendly-view.ww?id=10816
.

51
. Bill Moyers, “Restoring the Public Trust,”
TomPaine.com,
February 24, 2006,
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/02/24/restoring_the_public_trust.php
.