OLC Authorized Pentagon to Ignore Bill of Rights On U.S. Soil

OLC Authorized Pentagon to Ignore Bill of Rights On U.S. Soil

washingtonindependent.com

In an October 2001 memo released today, then-Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel John Yoo advised the Pentagon’s top lawyer that the president may not only deploy the military within the United States, but it may ignore the Bill of Rights in the process of doing so. Yoo and special counsel Robert Delahunty wrote to Defense Department general counsel William Haynes that the president has “ample constitutional and statutory authority to deploy the military against...

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So, we almost lost our "Bill of Rights" under Bush, and were close to having the military used against us. It is mind boggling how we almost lost all our rights and consitution completely during Bush's Presidency!

Although the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures on U.S. soil, Yoo concluded that “[a]lthough the situation is novel … we think that the better view is that the Fourth Amendment would not apply in these circumstances. Thus, for example, we do not think that a military commander carrying out a raid on a terrorist cell would be required to demonstrate probably cause or to obtain a warrant.”

This memo appears to have formed the legal basis for the Bush administration’s domestic warrantless wiretapping program, which at least one federal judge has since concluded was unconstitutional.

Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project, reads it as extending beyond the Fourth Amendment, however.

“This takes the position that the Bill of Rights does not constrain the military in its operations inside the United States,” Jaffer told me this afternoon. “The president can disregard the constitution during wartime, not just on foreign battlefields, but inside the United States. We had not seen a memo saying that before.”

I have read elsewhere, that this whole written memo was many pages long and delivered to Bush about 2 weeks after 911. One person has questioned how it could have been written so fast..... it seemed to them, that it had to have been written ahead of time......

While the memos reveal the legal groundwork that was laid for the Bush administration’s conduct in its “war on terror”, much of which appears to have been illegal, they still don’t answer the critical question that many Bush critics want to know.

“The obvious question that’s raised by these memos is, what conduct did the administration authorize on the basis of the legal reasoning in these memos?” Jaffer said. “That’s a question that has not been adequately answered.”

It is interesting, what other information and request were passed around, regarding the destruction of our consitution and Bill of Rights.

I guess we can all feel lucky that the extreme of the military being used against us, did not happen. But the question is........ will it still yet occur?





washingtonindependent.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

I just found a little more info. on this subject.

link to article: blog.wired.com...

"Military action might encompass making arrests, seizing documents or other property, searching persons or places or keeping them under surveillance, intercepting electronic or wireless communications, setting up roadblocks, interviewing witnesses and searching for suspects," the duo wrote.

The Justice Department secretly authorized President George Bush to use the military inside the United States to snoop on, raid and even kill citizens in order to fight terrorism without regard to the Fourth or Fifth Amendment, according to a Oct 23, 2001 memo released by the Obama Administration Monday.

"We do not think a military commander carrying out a raid on a terrorist cell would be required to demonstrate probable cause or to obtain a warrant," the Office of Legal Counsel memo (.pdf) said. "We think that the better view is that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to domestic military operations designed to deter and prevent future terrorist attacks."
The memo found that the military could be deployed widely within the United States without being subject to the limits of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Those actions include using the National Security Agency to spy on communications inside the United States without getting court approval -- as the Bush Administration admitted it did for years

Wow.

Okay.

I cannot believe this. I hated Bush but I mean are you serious? They would have gone through with this irrespective of the constitution and our bill of rights?

I can't believe a Republican, a conservative of all people, would want to do away with the constitution as conservatives are supposed to be for keeping things the way they are.

This is ridiculous. I cannot believe it.

They would have gone through with this irrespective of the constitution and our bill of rights?

Duh. They were not idiots, they were criminals.

a conservative of all people

Just because he says he's conservative doesn't mean he is. He never was.

John Yoo is a piece of garbage, this report shows it and the reports where he talked how torturing children is OK.