Obama Sides With Bush in Spy Case

[Freddie Stubbs]

By David Kravets January 22, 2009

The Obama administration fell in line with the Bush administration Thursday when it urged a federal judge to set aside a ruling in a closely watched spy case weighing whether a U.S. president may bypass Congress and establish a program of eavesdropping on Americans without warrants.

In a filing in San Francisco federal court, President Barack Obama adopted the same position as his predecessor. With just hours left in office, President George W. Bush late Monday asked U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker to stay enforcement of an important Jan. 5 ruling admitting key evidence into the case.

Thursday's filing by the Obama administration marked the first time it officially lodged a court document in the lawsuit asking the courts to rule on the constitutionality of the Bush administration's warrantless-eavesdropping program. The former president approved the wiretaps in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

"The Government's position remains that this case should be stayed," the Obama administration wrote (.pdf) in a filing that for the first time made clear the new president was on board with the Bush administration's reasoning in this case.

more: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/01/obama-sides-wit.html

[acmavm]

1. UH...

<snip>

The legal brouhaha concerns Walker's decision to admit as evidence a classified document allegedly showing that two American lawyers for a now-defunct Saudi charity were electronically eavesdropped on without warrants by the Bush administration in 2004.

The lawyers — Wendell Belew and Asim Ghafoo — sued the Bush administration after the U.S. Treasury Department accidentally released the Top Secret memo to them. At one point, the courts had ordered the document, which has never been made public, returned and removed from the case.

<snip>

[file83]

2. Does that mean Obama is doing something bad, or that Bush did something good?

I'm not a lawyer, can you explain it to the layperson? :hi:

[Occam Bandage]

3. Looks to me like a classified document was accidentally released,

the Bush administration said, "that document is not admissible in court," and the Obama administration agrees. Knowing nothing about the case or the document in question, I can't really weigh in either way.