The first executive order Duhbya signed in 2001 was to lock up presidential records in perpetuity. Six years later, the House has some spine again. TRY to remember next election that Heather Wilson voted in support of Duhbya’s absolute power. (Even Steve Pearce voted for the public.)mjh

PRESIDENTIAL RECORDS ACCESS: Voting 333 for and 93 against, the House
on March 14 passed a bill (HR 1255) nullifying a 2001 executive order
by President Bush impeding public and historians’ access to presidential
records. Bush’s order empowers future and past presidents and vice
presidents to deny or strictly limit access to their papers. This bill
would reinvigorate a post-Watergate law [1978] making most White House
documents publicly accessible without undue delay. …

No member spoke against the bill.

A yes vote was to send the bill to the Senate. ”
http://www.rollcallvotes.com/cgi-bin/house_newest.pl?+5+NM+

Frequent Errors In FBI’s Secret Records Requests, By John Solomon and Barton Gellman, Washington Post Staff Writers

A Justice Department investigation has found pervasive errors in the FBI’s use of its power to secretly demand telephone, e-mail and financial records in national security cases, officials with access to the report said yesterday.

The inspector general’s audit found 22 possible breaches of internal FBI and Justice Department regulations — some of which were potential violations of law — in a sampling of 293 “national security letters.” The letters were used by the FBI to obtain the personal records of U.S. residents or visitors between 2003 and 2005. The FBI identified 26 potential violations in other cases. …

The use of national security letters has grown exponentially since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In 2005 alone, the audit found, the FBI issued more than 19,000 such letters, amounting to 47,000 separate requests for information.

Report Details Missteps in Data Collection, “By R. Jeffrey Smith, Washington Post Staff Writer

Over a three-year period ending in 2005, the FBI collected intimate information about the lives of a population roughly the size of Bethesda’s — 52,000 — and stored it in an intelligence database accessible to about 12,000 federal, state and local law enforcement authorities and to certain foreign governments.

The FBI did so without systematically retaining evidence that its data collection was legal, without ensuring that all the data it obtained matched its needs or requests, without correctly tallying and reporting its efforts to Congress, and without ferreting out all of its abuses and reporting them to an intelligence oversight board. …

“We believe,” the inspector general’s office said in a summary of whether and how often the tool might have jeopardized the privacy of U.S. residents, “that a significant number of NSL-related violations are not being identified or reported by the FBI.” …

Congress significantly lowered the threshold for the government to obtain such information after the 2001 terrorism attacks, producing what the FBI itself reported as at least a fivefold increase in annual requests. Its tally cited 39,000 requests in 2003, 56,000 in 2004 and 47,000 in 2005 — involving a total of 24,937 “U.S. persons” (including citizens and green-card holders) and 27,262 foreigners in the United States. In 2004, nine letters alone requested telephone-subscriber information on 11,100 phone numbers.

The inspector general’s report discloses, however, that these numbers understated the FBI’s use of national security letters to collect data. After checking 77 investigative case files at four FBI field offices, investigators found that those offices had “significantly” underreported the number of requests they had made and that, in this small subset alone, the real number was 22 percent higher. …

The tens of thousands of data-collection requests have produced few criminal charges directly related to terrorism or espionage, according to the inspector general’s report. About half of the FBI’s field offices did not refer any of those targeted by such requests to prosecutors, the report said, and the most common charges cited by others were fraud, immigration violations and money laundering.

Firings Had Genesis in White House, By Dan Eggen and John Solomon, Washington Post Staff Writers

The White House suggested two years ago that the Justice Department fire all 93 U.S. attorneys, a proposal that eventually resulted in the dismissals of eight prosecutors last year, according to e-mails and internal documents that the administration will provide to Congress today.

The dismissals took place after President Bush told Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales in October that he had received complaints that some prosecutors had not energetically pursued voter-fraud investigations, according to a White House spokeswoman. …

Administration officials have portrayed the firings as a routine personnel matter, designed primarily to rid the department of a handful of poor performers.

But the documents and interviews indicate that the idea for the firings originated at least two years ago, when then-White House counsel Harriet E. Miers suggested to Sampson in February 2005 that all prosecutors be dismissed and replaced. [mjh: wasn’t Miers a Bush nominee for the Supreme Court?] …

Sampson also strongly urged bypassing Congress in naming replacements, using a little-known power slipped into the renewal of the USA Patriot Act in March 2006 that allows the attorney general to name interim replacements without Senate confirmation. [mjh: the Patriot Act is Bush’s great legacy.]