Black Box Report

After the Nixon / Watergate scandals of the 70's, Americans learned the lesson of the dangers of an unchecked, out of control executive branch. It's where we got the FISA court, to prevent a president from spying on his political enemies. It's also where we got the Intelligence Oversight Board, created in 1976 in the wake of widespread abuses by U.S. intelligence agencies. And ever since, the ghost of Nixon's administration, in the corporeal form of Dick Cheney, has sought to undo any and all congressionally-imposed restrictions on executive power. Oversight? You know how this president feels about oversight:

Bush was successful for years in marginalizing the IOB, making it along with other internal review mechanisms "ineffective", in the words of Sen. Leahy. For the first two years of his presidency, Bush just left the Board vacant. Subsequently, he packed the IOB...with plenty of cronies and incompetents.
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It's possible, then, that last year (a) congressional report of IOB nonfeasance publicly humiliated the Board into starting to do its job again. That could cause problems for the Bush administration, especially if (as in 2007) the IOB planned during the spring of this year to forward a set of reports about legal violations, this time those dating from 2007. That might include any number of details related to warrantless wiretapping or potentially even the politicization of the Justice Department.

Whoa! Can't have that, now, can we? So Bush issued an Executive Order stripping the Board of most of its powers and duties, and giving the oversight responsibility to Bush's hand-picked Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell:

Steven Aftergood, the director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, an advocacy group, said the move appears to dilute the independent board's investigatory powers in favor of a member of the president's administration.

"It makes the new board subordinate to the (national intelligence director) in a way that the old board was not subordinate to the director of central intelligence," he said.

The White House disagrees.

"The (board) retains its independent authority to review intelligence community activities," said White House spokesman Scott Stanzel. "It can, as appropriate, report matters to the president."

And thanks to Bush's EO, the procedure for doing so will be to...first report them to DNI McConnell. Who, obviously, is not independent, but a political appointee in an administration famous for being packed to the gills with yes-men, flunkies and sycophants.

So, quis custodiet ipsos custodes? No one. We're on the honor system now:

I can't wait to see how that's going to work. Bush's DNI and Bush's AG will check themselves for intelligence abuses, and then let Bush know if there are any problems.

What could possibly go wrong?

Oh, cooking up excuses to go to war, spying on Democrats, the possibilities are endless! And as a bonus, it's a ticking time bomb for the next president, provided they're a Democrat, of course:

To the extent that this is about his successor, my guess is that they figure that Congress will rediscover its interest in oversight and objections to presidential executive power overreach. The very powers Bush claimed will, for a Democratic president, be the foundation for impeachment. They aren't just masters of hypocrisy, they're masters of "distinctions without differences." That is, when President ClintonObama does it, it's somehow different when President BushMcCain does it.

It's OK for Republicans if Bush does it, but a Democrat? There will be blood.

And there's the rub. For years now, my biggest contention with those who advocated Bush's unchecked executive power has been this: If the shoe were on the other foot, would Republicans/conservatives/run-of-the-mill wingnuts be comfortable with President Hillary Clinton telling Congress to get stuffed on executive oversight? Spying on Americans? Politicizing the Justice Department? Really, anything the Bush administration has done over the last 7 years, imagine if President Hillary had done it. Would there be a hue and cry? Would there be a wailing and a gnashing of teeth and accusations of our president being mad with power and dangerously out of control?

Oh, heavens my, yes. Don't kid yourselves otherwise.

And yet, Republicans are only concerned with the here and now, while they hold power, the immediate political advantage. Nevermind that the ill-gotten powers are bad for the country as a whole. As long as there's a Republican in the White House, it's all good. Blogger Matthew Yglesias is on the same wavelength, but in this case, he thinks Bush is just being a generous guy:

Like everyone else, I sometimes wonder what conservatives are going to think about the Bush administration's headline executive power grabs when it's castrating harpy Hillary Clinton or Muslim black nationalist Barack Obama who's got the power to arbitrarily detain people, torture them, etc...

Bush waited pretty late into his lame duck period to pull this particular stunt, so it seems this is mostly a favor to his successor. He wants John McCain, Clinton, or Obama to be in a position to commit widespread abuses and not just hog all the glory for himself.

Awww, what a guy, but really Mr. President, you shouldn't have.