After much publicly acrimony and week-long speculation about its contents, the "Nunes Memo" chairman Devin Nunes of California) was finally made public today.
Should the memo serve as an opportunity for Congress to revisit its anemic surveillance oversight and reform record? Absolutely.
The memo itself is concerned with FBI Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act surveillance requests targeting then-former Trump campaign aide Carter Page in 2016.
The Nunes Memo also implies that the FBI deliberately lied to the FISC about what it knew about Steele's opposition research target and clients.
In releasing the memo, neither Nunes, House Speaker Paul Ryan, or President Trump have called upon Congress to address this loophole.
What House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland has called for is Nunes' head. Speaker Ryan is unlikely to accomodate the request, though one could make a very credible argument that he should.
Nunes' tenure as HPSCI chairman has been a poltical and oversight disaster.
Nunes and his GOP colleagues have made much about alleged surveillance violations against white businessmen while ignoring far more credible allegations of surveillance abuse against politically active people of color.
The memo on alleged violations of Page's rights rings quite hollow when you consider that the House GOP-controlled HPSCI conducted no investigation into documents released by Edward Snowden showing clear evidence that Arab- and Muslim-American leaders had been the target of unjustified-and likely unconstitutional-surveillance.
Nor has the House GOP-controlled HPSCI shown the slightest interest in investigating the near-complete breakdown of internal Intelligence Community watchdog.
I have heard credible reports about whistleblower retaliation problems at multiple IGs across the IC. But instead of investigating these and other genuine IC oversight challenges, the House GOP leadership-and their Democratic counterparts-have spent their time and energy arguing over a political "Nothingburger" for weeksensuring that the FISA Follies continue.
https://www.cato.org/blog/fisa-follies-nunes-memo-edition
Should the memo serve as an opportunity for Congress to revisit its anemic surveillance oversight and reform record? Absolutely.
The memo itself is concerned with FBI Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act surveillance requests targeting then-former Trump campaign aide Carter Page in 2016.
The Nunes Memo also implies that the FBI deliberately lied to the FISC about what it knew about Steele's opposition research target and clients.
In releasing the memo, neither Nunes, House Speaker Paul Ryan, or President Trump have called upon Congress to address this loophole.
What House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland has called for is Nunes' head. Speaker Ryan is unlikely to accomodate the request, though one could make a very credible argument that he should.
Nunes' tenure as HPSCI chairman has been a poltical and oversight disaster.
Nunes and his GOP colleagues have made much about alleged surveillance violations against white businessmen while ignoring far more credible allegations of surveillance abuse against politically active people of color.
The memo on alleged violations of Page's rights rings quite hollow when you consider that the House GOP-controlled HPSCI conducted no investigation into documents released by Edward Snowden showing clear evidence that Arab- and Muslim-American leaders had been the target of unjustified-and likely unconstitutional-surveillance.
Nor has the House GOP-controlled HPSCI shown the slightest interest in investigating the near-complete breakdown of internal Intelligence Community watchdog.
I have heard credible reports about whistleblower retaliation problems at multiple IGs across the IC. But instead of investigating these and other genuine IC oversight challenges, the House GOP leadership-and their Democratic counterparts-have spent their time and energy arguing over a political "Nothingburger" for weeksensuring that the FISA Follies continue.
https://www.cato.org/blog/fisa-follies-nunes-memo-edition
No comments:
Post a Comment