White House Civil Liberties Board Has Never Met

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White House Civil Liberties Board Has Never Met

Mon, 20 Feb 2006 16:11:55 -0800

 

 

White House Civil Liberties Board Has Never Met

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022006R.shtml

 

For Americans troubled by the prospect of federal agents eavesdropping

on their phone conversations or combing through their Internet records,

there is good news: A little-known board exists in the White House

whose purpose is to ensure that privacy and civil liberties are protected

in the fight against terrorism. Someday, it might actually meet.

 

 

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022006R.shtml

 

Privacy Guardian Is Still a Paper Tiger

By Richard B. Schmitt

The Los Angeles Times

 

Monday 20 February 2006

 

A year after its creation, the White House civil liberties board

has yet to do a single day of work.

 

Washington - For Americans troubled by the prospect of federal

agents eavesdropping on their phone conversations or combing through

their Internet records, there is good news: A little-known board

exists in the White House whose purpose is to ensure that privacy and

civil liberties are protected in the fight against terrorism.

 

Someday, it might actually meet.

 

Initially proposed by the bipartisan commission that investigated

the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Privacy and Civil Liberties

Oversight Board was created by the intelligence overhaul that

President Bush signed into law in December 2004.

 

More than a year later, it exists only on paper.

 

Foot-dragging, debate over its budget and powers, and concern over

the qualifications of some of its members - one was treasurer of

Bush's first campaign for Texas governor - has kept the board from

doing a single day of work.

 

On Thursday, after months of delay, the Senate Judiciary Committee

took a first step toward standing up the fledgling watchdog, approving

the two lawyers Bush nominated to lead the panel. But it may take

months before the board is up and running and doing much serious work.

 

Critics say the inaction shows the administration is just going

through the motions when it comes to civil liberties.

 

" They have stalled in giving the board adequate funding. They have

stalled in making appointments, " said Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney

(D-N.Y.). " It is apparent they are not taking this seriously. "

 

The Sept. 11 commission also has expressed reservations about the

commitment to the liberties panel.

 

" We felt it was absolutely vital, " said Thomas H. Kean, the

Republican former governor of New Jersey who led the commission. " We

had certainly hoped it would have been up and running a long time ago. "

 

The inaction is especially noteworthy in light of recent events.

Some Republicans joined Democrats to delay renewal of the

anti-terrorism Patriot Act because of civil liberties concerns. And

the disclosure in December that Bush approved surveillance of certain

US residents' international communications without a court order has

caused bipartisan dismay in Congress.

 

" Obviously, civil liberties issues are critically important, and

they have been to this president, especially after 9/11, " said White

House spokeswoman Dana Perino, adding that the White House had moved

expeditiously to establish the board. " We do not formally nominate

until we are through the background investigation and the full

vetting. It takes time to present those nominations to the Senate. But

now that they have been confirmed, that is a good thing. "

 

The board chairwoman is Carol E. Dinkins, a Houston lawyer who was

a Justice Department official in the Reagan administration. A longtime

friend of the Bush family, she was the treasurer of George W. Bush's

first campaign for governor of Texas, in 1994, and co-chair of Lawyers

for Bush-Cheney, which recruited Republican lawyers to handle legal

battles after the November 2004 election.

 

Dinkins, a longtime partner in the Houston law firm of Vinson &

Elkins, where Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales once was a partner, has

specialized in defending oil and gas companies in environmental lawsuits.

 

Foremost among her credentials, she told Senate Judiciary

Committee members in a response to their questions, was the two years

she spent as deputy attorney general in President Reagan's Justice

Department. There, she said, she had to weigh civil liberties concerns

while overseeing domestic surveillance and counter-intelligence cases.

 

The board vice chairman is Alan Charles Raul, a Washington lawyer

who first suggested the concept of a civil liberties panel in an

opinion article in the Los Angeles Times in December 2001. Raul, a

former Agriculture Department general counsel currently in private

practice, has published a book on privacy and the digital age and is

the only panel member with apparent expertise in civil liberties issues.

 

The panel's lone Democrat, Lanny J. Davis, has known Bush since

the two were undergraduates at Yale. Civil liberties groups regard the

Washington lawyer, who worked in the Clinton White House, as likely to

be a progressive voice on the panel.

 

The board also includes a conservative Republican legal icon,

Washington lawyer and former Bush Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson,

whose wife, Barbara, died in the Sept. 11 attacks. The fifth member is

Francis X. Taylor, a retired Air Force general and former State

Department counter-terrorism coordinator, who is chief security

officer at General Electric Co.

 

The board members declined to comment for this article. Three

referred calls to Dinkins, who referred calls to the White House.

 

The idea of such a watchdog agency was broached almost immediately

after the Sept. 11 attacks, as conservatives and liberals alike saw a

need for the government to consider the implications of new and

growing anti-terrorism measures.

 

The idea was to have professionals ask hard questions about

whether the government was going too far in collecting and

disseminating information about suspected terrorists, and to have

those professionals make their views known in regular reports to the

president.

 

The board was given a broad mandate to review the civil liberties

effects of proposed regulations and executive branch policies related

to the war on terrorism. It will report to Bush.

 

The law gives the panel access to classified information under

certain circumstances, but not the power to subpoena documents. The

board, which is within the Executive Office of the president, operates

at the behest of the administration.

 

Civil liberties groups saw it as a promising first step.

 

" The board has the potential to be an important force in

protecting civil liberties if the White House gives the board a role

in the policymaking process, as Congress intended, " the Center for

Democracy and Technology, a Washington advocacy group, wrote at the

time the law was passed.

 

So far, that potential has not been realized.

 

The Bush administration waited nine months to send the nominations

of Dinkins and Raul to the Senate for approval. The three other

members of the board did not require Senate confirmation, but they

could not function without a chairman.

 

Doubts about funding also developed. The administration proposed

an initial budget of $750,000, which lawmakers doubled. But critics

consider that far from adequate. A similar board in the Homeland

Security Department was initially proposed to have a $13-million budget.

 

Some members of Congress are concerned that the administration may

still be trying to shortchange the board.

 

The fiscal 2007 budget that the administration released this month

includes no express mention of any funding for it. That triggered a

letter of protest from Maloney and Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) to

the Office of Management and Budget.

 

A spokesman for the office, Scott Milburn, said in an interview

that money was being requested for the board, but he declined to say

how much.

 

Congress, which championed the idea of the board, also dragged its

heels. Dinkins and Raul were officially nominated in September, when

the Senate Judiciary Committee was busy with a Supreme Court

nomination. The panel held a confirmation hearing in November, but

only two of the 18 members showed up.

 

The committee finally approved Dinkins and Raul on Thursday

without discussion. Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.)

said his panel moved as quickly as possible considering its other

duties, such as Supreme Court nominations, and considering the time

the White House took in sending the nominations to the panel.

 

The top Judiciary Committee Democrat, Richard J. Durbin of

Illinois, said in an interview: " They seem to be good people. They

have done good things in their lives. But they certainly don't bring

any special expertise to what I consider to be an extremely

challenging position. "

 

But Durbin said he believed the board could still be a valuable

addition to the debate over security and liberty as concern over the

growing power of government after Sept. 11 cuts across ideological lines.

 

Dinkins asserted in her written responses to the Senate committee

that the board would not be a pushover for the administration.

 

" The president will be best served if the board offers unvarnished

and candid advice concerning whether counter-terrorism policies are

developed with adequate consideration of privacy and civil liberties, "

she wrote. " It is critical that ... the board get up and running as

quickly as possible. "

 

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