12/16/2023 0 Comments Totally redacted letterThere was a redaction in the letter before “CIA program.”Īdditional documents released by the CIA Thursday also revealed limited details about a program to collect financial data against the Islamic State. CIA program, and that the American public not be misled into believe that the reforms in any reauthorization legislation fully cover the IC’s collection of their records,” the senators wrote in their letter. “It is critical that Congress not legislate without awareness of a. citizens or others covered by privacy laws requires a foreign intelligence purpose. According to the document, a pop-up box warns CIA analysts using the program that seeking any information about U.S. The CIA released a series of redacted recommendations about the program issued by an oversight panel known as the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. “CIA is committed to transparency consistent with our obligation to protect intelligence sources and methods.” persons in the conduct of our vital national security mission,” Kristi Scott, the agency’s privacy and civil liberties officer, said in a statement. “CIA recognizes and takes very seriously our obligation to respect the privacy and civil liberties of U.S. The process of removing redactions is known as “unmasking.” information, including redacting the names of any Americans from reports unless they are deemed relevant to an investigation. Intelligence agencies are required to take steps to protect U.S. But the spy agencies’ sprawling collection of foreign communications often snares Americans’ messages and data incidentally. The CIA and National Security Agency have a foreign mission and are generally barred from investigating Americans or U.S. A number of Trump associates were among those subsequently convicted and jailed, including Stone Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chair Gen Michael Flynn, the former national security adviser and the ex-president’s long-serving personal attorney Michael Cohen.There have long been concerns about what information the intelligence community collects domestically, driven in part by previous violations of Americans’ civil liberties. The two-year Mueller inquiry led to the indictment of 34 individuals and three Russian businesses on charges including conspiracy and lying to the FBI. “While we do not yet know what is in the memo, the court’s opinion gives us confidence that we were right to have questions.” “We requested these records and filed this lawsuit due to serious doubts about the official story coming out of Barr’s DoJ,” the group’s spokesman, Jordan Libowitz, said. A second, separate document, a draft legal analysis from the office of legal counsel, could remain secret, Jackson decided.Ĭrew officials welcomed Jackson’s ruling. It said the memo came out the same day Barr briefed Congress about Mueller’s findings on Russian interference in the 2016 election.ĭepartment lawyers argued in court that much of the substance of the memo should stay blacked out because it was protected internal discussions, CNN said. The nine-page memo that Jackson ordered released was authored by Steven Engel of the office of legal counsel and Ed O’Callaghan, an adviser in the deputy attorney general’s office, according to CNN, which described them as “political leaders” in the justice department. Jackson, who has previously questioned the Trump administration’s motives in keeping information secret, and who sentenced the Trump acolyte Roger Stone to 40 months in prison for crimes including lying to Congress, has been a frequent target of attacks by the former president, who subsequently commuted his long-time friend’s sentence. Mueller said evidence on obstruction was “inconclusive”, but Barr concluded that Trump had not stood in the special counsel’s way. The Mueller report did not establish collusion between the Trump administration and Russian officials, but found evidence of Russian election tampering. “The fact that would not be prosecuted was a given,” she added. “The agency’s redactions and incomplete explanations obfuscate the true purpose of the memorandum, and the excised portions belie the notion that it fell to the attorney general to make a prosecution decision or that any such decision was on the table at any time,” Jackson said in the opinion released Tuesday. The almost totally redacted memo, the lawyers had claimed, was legal reasoning that merely assisted William Barr, the then attorney general, to come to the decision not to charge the president for obstructing Mueller’s inquiry, and was therefore protected from public release.īut Barr’s decision not to charge Trump was predetermined, Jackson said in her 35-page opinion in a lawsuit brought in the US district of Columbia by the government transparency group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew).
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