Tuesday, February 03, 2009

Dozens of secret Bush surveillance, executive power memos found; Could be made public

RAW STORY

Details about more than three dozen secret memoranda written by Bush Administration officials now sit atop a chart created by public interest reporting group. The memos track new details about dozens of secret Bush Administration legal positions on torture, detention and warrantless wiretapping.

Meanwhile, Obama's freshly-confirmed Attorney General Eric Holder told senators that he was open to declassifying White House legal memos if no support for their original classification could be found, signaling a likely showdown with former President George W. Bush over executive privilege.

"The Bush administration's controversial policies on detentions, interrogations and warrantless wiretapping were underpinned by legal memoranda," Pro Publica's Dan Nguyen and Christopher Weaver write. "While some of those memos have been released (primarily as a result of ACLU lawsuits), the former administration kept far more memos secret than has been previously understood. At least three dozen by our count........."

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