Posted on 01/17/2006 11:55:18 AM PST by Man50D
You’d never know it from our one party media’s coverage of this story, but the "plaintiff" in the trumped-up New York lawsuit is none other than the granddaughter of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg — Rachel Meeropol.
The Rosenbergs were executed in 1953 for helping to pass US atom bomb secrets to the Soviet Union. Julius’s KGB nom de guerre was "Liberal."
Rachel is a Communist in her own right. She is a Vice President of the New York City chapter of the communist National Lawyers Guild.
Ms Meerpol is also a fixture in may of the most ultra left organizations out there, such as The Children Of Resistance.
But you’d never know any of that from the DNC’s Associated Press:Associated Press
Groups Sue to Stop Domestic Spying Program
By LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press Writer
Federal lawsuits were filed Tuesday seeking to halt President Bush’s domestic eavesdropping program, calling it an "illegal and unconstitutional program" of electronic eavesdropping on American citizens.
The lawsuits accusing Bush of exceeding his constitutional powers were filed in federal court in New York by the Center for Constitutional Rights and in Detroit by the American Civil Liberties Union.
The New York suit, filed on behalf of the center and individuals, names Bush, the head of the National Security Agency, and the heads of the other major security agencies, challenging the NSA’s surveillance of persons within the United States without judicial approval or statutory authorization.
It asked a judge to stop Bush and government agencies from conducting warrantless surveillance of communications in the United States.
The Detroit suit, which also names the NSA, was filed by the ACLU, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Greenpeace and several individuals.
Messages seeking comment were left Tuesday morning with the National Security Agency and the Justice Department.
Bush, who said the wiretapping is legal and necessary, has pointed to a congressional resolution passed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that authorized him to use force in the fight against terrorism as allowing him to order the program.
The program authorized eavesdropping of international phone calls and e-mails of people deemed a terror risk.
But the New York lawsuit noted that federal law already allows the president to conduct warrantless surveillance during the first 15 days of a war and allows court authorization of surveillance for agents of foreign powers or terrorist groups.
Instead of following the law, Bush "unilaterally and secretly authorized electronic surveillance without judicial approval or congressional authorization," the lawsuit said.
At a news conference, Center for Constitutional Rights Legal Director Bill Goodman portrayed the president as a man on an unprecedented power grab at the expense of basic democratic principles.
He said the public was starting to understand the assertion that the erosion of individual rights is a slippery slope that lets the government "brand anyone a terrorist with no right to counsel, no right to be brought before a judge and no right to privacy in communications."
The Detroit lawsuit said the plaintiffs, who frequently communicate by telephone and e-mail with people in the Middle East and Asia, have a "well-founded belief" that their communications are being intercepted by the government.
"By seriously compromising the free speech and privacy rights of the plaintiffs and others, the program violates the First and Fourth Amendments of the United States Constitution," the lawsuit states.
In its suit in New York, the Center for Constitutional Rights maintained its work was directly affected by the surveillance because its lawyers represent a potential class of hundreds of Muslim foreign nationals detained after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
It said its attorney-client privilege was likely violated as it represented hundreds of men detained without charge as enemy combatants at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station and a Canadian citizen who was picked up at a New York airport while changing planes, sent to Syria and tortured and detained without charges for nearly a year.
The group said the surveillance program has inhibited its ability to represent clients vigorously, making it hard to communicate via telephone and e-mail with overseas clients, witnesses and others for fear the conversations would be overheard.
Plaintiff Rachel Meeropol, an attorney at the center, said she believes she has been targeted. "I’m personally outraged that my confidential communication with my clients may have been listened to by the U.S. government," she said.If what Ms Meeropol says is true, one suspects she has been having speaks with Al Qaeda members.
Of course Rachel’s father, Robert Meeropol, didn’t fall far from the Rosenbergs’ tree either. Among his many accomplishments, Mr Meeropol is an avowed Communist supporter. Fidel Castro was his boyhood idol. He supports convicted cop killer Mumia Abu Jamal. He is the founder and Executive Director of the ultra radical Rosenberg Fund for Children.
Mr Meeropol is also adamantly opposed to the War On Terror.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/1858230/posts
F.B.I. Monitoring; a Nazi Artifact; the Weak Dollar; and More
(snip)
From 1940 to 1975, the F.B.I. carried out an intense campaign of covert surveillance against the National Lawyers Guild, an organization founded in 1937 and long associated with the labor movement and liberal causes.
As Colin Moynihan reports in The Times, the F.B.I. turned over copies of some 400,000 pages from its files on the group under a 1977 lawsuit. In 1997, the copies were donated by the guild’s lawyers to the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University with the understanding that they could be made available to the public this year.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2052529/posts?page=3042#3042
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:15:04 -0400
From: National Security Archive archive@GWU.EDU
Subject: More Cold War Espionage Transcripts Unsealed
National Security Archive Update, October 24, 2008
More Cold War Espionage Transcripts Unsealed
Victory for Archive and Historical Associations Results in the Release of New Information About Rosenbergs Spy Case
For more information contact:
Tom Blanton/Meredith Fuchs - 202/994-7000
David Vladeck - 202/662-9540
Washington, DC, October 24, 2008 - Today, in response to a petition filed by the National Security Archive and several historical associations, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) released the previously secret grand jury transcripts of eight witnesses related to Cold War espionage prosecutions. The nearly 300 pages of transcripts from the Brothman/Moskowitz grand jury reveal important new details about the testimony of Elizabeth Bentley, the so-called “Red Spy Queen,” and Harry Gold, who led authorities to David Greenglass and the Rosenbergs. In addition, NARA released the testimonies of Vivian Glassman, Edith Levitov, and Frank Wilentz from the Rosenberg grand jury.
“The release of these additional grand jury records marks an important victory for historians, archivists, and the American people,” stated Meredith Fuchs, the National Security Archive’s General Counsel. “It adds to the historical record on the most important espionage trial in American history, which was a defining moment of the Cold War, and helps us better understand how our society responded to the threat of Soviet espionage.”
The government, through the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, had opposed the release of the Brothman/Moskowitz materials. On August 26, 2008, however, Judge Alvin Hellerstein decided they were of “substantial historical importance” and ordered them released. The government declined to appeal that ruling.
“The disclosure of the Rosenberg and Brothman/Moskowitz transcripts bears witness to the idea that historically valuable grand jury records should, after a reasonable period of time, be made public,” explained David Vladeck, counsel for the Archive and the historical associations that supported the petition and a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. “Keeping our nation’s history secret serves no legitimate purpose. These records were too important to be left to gather dust on the shelves of the National Archives. Now that they have been released, historians and the American people can come to grips with their own history.”
Visit the Web site of the National Security Archive for more information about today’s posting.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.