White House Lags in Commitment to Oversight Board
Friday we wrote that a bipartisan group of Senators would be sending a letter to the White House asking why it hasn't moved on the 9/11 Commission's recommendation to create a Civil Liberties Oversight Board as a check and balance on its anti-terror policies. The recommendation was specifically included in the terrorism law passed by Congress and signed by the President last December.
The letter, addressed to Andrew Card and signed by Republican Senator Susan Collins and Democratic Senators Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut and Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, is avaiable here.
The New York Times reports on the letter today.
...the four senators asked for a timetable and details on how the panel would be staffed and set up. The letter noted that the White House's proposed budget for the board fell well below the $13 million devoted to a civil rights office within the Department of Homeland Security, the $39 million for the Office of the United States Trade Representative and the $4 million for the Council of Economic Advisers.
The Times notes that the ACLU has also noted the White House has been dragging its feet in setting up the board.
Timothy H. Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the White House's lack of action reflected a resistance to aggressive monitoring of civil liberties in the face of public concern about the government's use of data mining, toughened immigration controls, expanded surveillance powers and a host of other counterterrorism measures.
"With the centralization of power in the intelligence community," Mr. Edgar said in an interview, "you need to have some agency in government that's seriously looking at protecting civil liberties. Instead, you have a real lack of commitment from the White House, and they're not really doing much of anything."
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