Ex-supreme court justice wins Homeland Security post

The Union Leader, Manchester, NH ^ | August 7, 2003 | JOHN DISTASO

[RJCogburn]

THAYER’S NEW THING. The Democratic Presidential primary race continues to heat up, but first, there’s news from the Republican right.

Stephen Thayer, the former state Supreme Court justice whose resignation three years ago was the catalyst for the investigation, impeachment and eventual acquittal of Chief Justice David Brock, has a new, high-ranking post in the Bush administration.

Thayer recently was named deputy director of the Office of National Risk Assessment, a relatively new branch of the Department of Homeland Security.

Exactly how Thayer secured the job is not clear. But his former role as executive director of the American Conservative Union provided him with friends in the conservative community in Washington, D.C. And he remains a true-blue Republican.

Thayer yesterday confirmed he’s been in the post for three weeks. He cited his experience in the 1980s as U.S. attorney for New Hampshire as a qualification.

He left the ACU, the nation’s oldest and largest conservative grassroots lobbying organization, within the past month or so after three months as the executive director. Thayer had joined ACU in 2001 as its director of legislation and legal policy.

Thayer said he dealt with privacy issues while at the ACU and acknowledged that the group parted ways with the Bush administration on the Patriot Act because of those issues.

Now, Thayer said, part of his job will be to ensure that programs aimed at protecting the traveling American public do not invade their privacy. Apparently, that will include monitoring a new terrorist-identification program which, according to The Washington Post, has already come under fire from privacy advocates.

The Office of National Risk Assessment, or ONRA, is the newest section of the homeland security agency and was formerly in the Department of Transportation. It is now under Homeland Security’s Transportation Security Administration.

Thayer deferred to his new boss in describing its the office’s role.

In March, agency Director Ben H. Bell III told a congressional briefing, “ONRA’s mission is to develop and maintain risk assessment systems to detect known terrorists and other legislatively assigned programs. This office will apply risk assessment processes and systems to all forms of transportation.”

Bell said ONRA is heading the implementation of a new passenger safety program called the Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-Screening System (CAPPS II), a method to weed identified terrorists out of the traveling airline public. The Washington Post reported in June that the program was scaled back after complaints by unidentified “privacy advocates.”

The Post reported that a new group of self-described “privacy-centric” officials had recently joined ONRA. But the newspaper also said, “Even with the new approach, CAPPS II may be the largest domestic surveillance system the government has ever created, and some privacy specialists remain skeptical, saying much about the program remains clouded in secrecy.”

It all points to the conclusion that Thayer’s new post is a key one on the homeland security front.

[RJCogburn]

For those who do not know, Thayer had to resign from the state Supreme Court after trying to influence its actions in his own divorce case, as well as arguing for sanctions against a lawyer who had crossed swords with a patron lawyer of his who had lent him, Thayer, a bunch of money as I recall.

His actions led to the impeachment of other justices on the court.

It should be hard to believe that the Bush/Ashcroft team would choose such a tainted fellow, but then again, they have shown no interest whatsoever in the matter of government corruption.