Obama Releases Bush Admin. Memo from Just After 9/11 Justifying Warrantless Arrests of Terror Suspects

I'm not sure there's any danger here. However, what we have here is the release of a top-secret memo, after no more than a month's review by the Obama Administration (and probably shorter than that), with little other purpose than to appease the netroots and attempt to embarrass Bush.

Attempt to embarrass, note. I don't think the public is quite on board with Obama's Let a Smile and Chiseled Pecs Be Your Umbrella school of national security.

The Justice Department on Monday released a long-secret legal document from 2001 in which the Bush administration claimed the military could search and seize terror suspects in the United States without warrants.

The legal memo was written about a month after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. It says constitutional protections against unlawful search and seizure would not apply to terror suspects in the U.S., as long as the president or another high official authorized the action.

Even after the Bush administration rescinded that legal analysis, the Justice Department refused to release its contents, prompting a standoff with congressional Democrats.

The memo was one of nine released Monday by the Obama administration.
Another memo showed that, within two weeks of Sept. 11, the administration was contemplating ways to use wiretaps without getting warrants.

posted by Ace at 07:27 PM

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