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Secret DOJ Memo Says Fourth Amendment Has "No
Application" After 9/11
Disclosure of classified documents reveal total dismissal
of U.S. Constitution
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The American Civil Liberties Union has uncovered details pertaining
to a secret Justice Department memo from October 2001 that reveals
the Bush administration effectively suspended the Fourth Amendment
where domestic counter terrorism operations are concerned.
The ACLU
reports that the memo states the "Fourth Amendment
had no application to domestic military operations." after
9/11. In other words, the DOJ gave the White House a green light
to effectively shelve Constitutional protection against unreasonable
searches and seizures in the wake of the terror attacks.
The memo was written by then deputy assistant attorney
general John Yoo, also the co-author of the PATRIOT Act and author
of the now notorious torture
memos.
It is almost certain that Yoo's memo was written
to provide a legal basis for the NSA, a military intelligence
agency, to begin its warrantless wiretapping program, which was
initiated
in the same month.
Just days after the memo's delivery to the White
House, Dick Cheney and other administration officials briefed
four House and Senate leaders on the NSA's secret terrorist surveillance
program for the first time.
The existence of the 2001 memo came to light via
a newly declassified March
2003 document from the Department of Justice's Office of Legal
Counsel (OLC) entitled Military Interrogation
of Alien Unlawful Combatants Held Outside the United States,
which makes reference to the previous memo.
(Article continues below)
The ACLU reports that this second memo takes the
erosion of the Constitution beyond the Fourth Amendment and makes
the case that the central due process guarantee of the Fifth Amendment,
the protection against deprivation of life, liberty and property,
can also be bypassed by the President.
"This memo makes a mockery of the Constitution
and the rule of law," said Amrit Singh, a staff attorney
with the ACLU. "That it was issued by the Justice Department,
whose job it is to uphold the law, makes it even more unconscionable."
The March 2003 document was declassified by the
Pentagon in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by
the ACLU pertaining to the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody
abroad.
In a footnote of the document it is written "Our
office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application
to domestic military operations", referring to a document
titled Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist
Activities Within the United States."
"The recent disclosures underscore the Bush
administration's extraordinarily sweeping conception of executive
power," said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU's National
Security Project. "The administration's lawyers believe
the president should be permitted to violate statutory law,
to violate international treaties, and even to violate the Fourth
Amendment inside the U.S. They believe that the president should
be above the law."
The AP
reports that the Justice Department has refused to
say if and when the legal opinion expressed in the two newly discovered
memos was overturned internally, meaning that it could still be
considered legally acceptable to forgo constitutional protections
on the President's say so.
The ACLU has challenged the withholding of the October
2001 memo and the issue is pending before the U.S. District Court
for the District of Columbia.
These two new memos provide more sections in the
vast jigsaw of legislation that when pieced together makes up
the complete
overturning by the current administration of the
protections provided to American citizens by the Constitution
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