There are two categories of documents he has, which he thinks might be responsive to the Senate subpoena.  These are a series of "Top Secret/Codeword Presidential Authorizations" of various dates, and a number of Department of Justice memoranda which, while not addressed to the Vice President, somehow made it into those man-sized safes in his offices.  

Astonishingly, Deadeye appears to have also shown us that Bushie lied.  Remember how, every time Bushie and all the others in his admin talk about warrantlessly wiretapping anyone they want, anytime they want, they always talk about how the program was reauthorized every forty-five days?  Yeah - that's one of those talking points which is supposed to reassure us that Papa Bushie has a strong, sober, thoughtful hand throttling back the crazed wiretapping engine that is your government.  

Ain't so.  These knuckleheads look like they can't even run a suspense file.  

Or, they don't care because all those strong safeguards in place to protect against abuse don't really exist.  

Right before I posted this, I read the articles linked here and there on the topic.  I saw this coming:  today, of course, the WaPo article slips in the term "approximately every 45 days", instead of the "every 45 days" we'd been previously told.  The "we're so stupid, it's our stupidity and negligence we're having to excuse ourselves for" defense.  From the same walking sacks of lying protoplasm who, last week, told us all their "strong safeguards" would protect against overreach under new FISA.

Bullsh*t.  They're making it up as they go along.

I went through the list of "TS/Codeword Presidential authorizations"  Deadeye provided.  I think it's safe to say that these indicate the days Bushie signed off to reauthorize his precious little program.  What else was Leahy looking for that Deadeye would even tell him existed, after all? Anyway, it would appear the program was reauthorized 42 times since being initially authorized (in writing) on October 4, 2001.  Of those 42 reauthorizations, 20 took place 45 or fewer days after the prior one (two of the reauthorizations took place exactly 45 days after the prior one).  Which means, 22 of them were more than 45 days after the last.

The longest time between reauthorizations:  64 days, 1/9/02-3/14/02

The breakdown of when the overlength reauthorizations took place is kind of interesting:

Between inception and November 7, 2002, there were 10 reauthorizations, of which 2 were more than 45 days after the prior.

Between November 8, 2002 and November 7, 2004, there were 16 reauthorizations, of which 7 were more than 45 days after the prior.

Once re-election had been won, there was no need to worry about the only accountability which really matters to the President - the voters - they let their safeguards and standards slide.  Big surprise, that.  

Between November 8, 2004 and November 7, 2006, there were 15 reauthorizations, of which 13 were more than 45 days after the prior.

Of course, once it became clear someone could actually send subpoenas to the WH and require an answer (as opposed to the cowering Rethugs who said "OK" when Deadeye told them they couldn't subpoena relative to warrantless wiretapping), they got their act together again:  

After November 8, 2006, there was one reauthorization reported, which was exactly 45 days after the prior.

Dates of TS/Codeword Presidential authorizations and number of days between authorizations:

10/4/01   

11/2l/01        48

11/30/01        9

1/9/02            40

3/14/02            64

4/18/02            35

5/21/02            33

6/24/02            34

7/30/02            36

9/10/02            42

10/15/02        35

11/18/02        34

1/8/03            51

2/7/03            30

3/17/03            38

4/22/03            36

6/11/03            50

7/14/03            33

9/10/03            58

10/15/03        35

12/9/03            55

1/14/04            36

3/11/04, amended 3/19/04, amended 4/2/04  57, 8, 14

5/5/04        33 (from 4/2/04), 55 (from 3/11/04)

6/23/04            49

8/9/04            47

9/17/04            39

11/17/04        61

1/11/05            55

3/1/05            49

4/19/05            49

6/14/05            56

7/26/05            42

9/10/05            46

10/26/05        46

12/13/05        48

1/27/06            45

3/21/06            53

5/16/06            56

7/6/06            51

9/6/06            62

10/24/06        48

12/8/06            45

[Y'know - it's a pain formatting stuff in this editor.  Sorry for the squiggle.]

Emptywheel and others have done some interesting work incorporating these disclosures into the overall timeline on Program X, and make a good case about the attempt to retroactively legalize the previously illegal conduct.  

I'll leave that issue and move on.

The interesting things about the DoJ memoranda, which per Deadeye's letter were "not rendered to the Office of the Vice President", are at least two-fold.  There's a nice job over at Balkinization on this, which TL has previously linked to.   I have a slightly different take on this.

First, the language used:  "not rendered to the Office of the Vice President".  If one wants to be cute in trying to avoid civil discovery (which, really, is what this is), there are an infinite number of semantic dodges which can be used in writing the responses.  This is one of them.  

One would, normally, write a memorandum.  In sending it, one would send it to the requester, the assigner, the recipient, or some other person.  One would more likely "render" an opinion.  "Rendering an opinion" - any opinion - is the lawyerese way of saying it.  So, from the semantic construct, one could easily conclude these memoranda contain opinions of the DoJ (or rather some element within DoJ, about which more anon), which opinions were rendered in some context.  Now, the language indicates that, to the extent there was an opinion, it was not directed to the OVP and therefore "not rendered to the Office of the Vice President".

Cute, right?  Probably not untruthful, in a strictly legal sense, too.  

Here's the rub, or more accurately, rubs.

First, these are secret DoJ memoranda.  How do we know this?  First, they are of and concerning the warrantless wiretapping program, Program X.  About that program, the administration has a stock answer to not deny its existence, but still to give no information about it.  It's a big secret.  Bushie told us all how big a secret, when he castigated the press for printing it a year after they found out about it and held it so as not to bust up his re-election.

Second, Comey, in his testimony to the Senate, testified he knew nothing about these (or any) memoranda.  Comey was second-in-command at DoJ and, for a while, the Acting AG.  He was one of the prime terra-fighters in the Admin.  And, yet, he was not read into Program X;  when he was, the questions about its true legality started to come to the fore.  And, he was not privy to the memoranda which, apparently, explain the legal bases upon which Program X rests.

Third, given the compartmentalization concerning Program X we've all read about lately, how incongruous does it have to be for the OVP to have a copy of memoranda about a super-secret Program X, and yet not be the agency to which the memoranda (and opinions therein) were rendered?  The compartmentalization was such that Sen. Rockefeller, the Intel committee chair, had to hand-write to Deadeye his letter objecting - and noting the rules (Deadeye) set meant he could not approve or disapprove because he couldn't ask technical experts their opinions.  The compartmentalization was such that the AG didn't know everything about Program X, but one or more of his subordinates did, and communicated their opinions to the WH via a back-channel.

Fourth, think back to folks like Scooter.  He not only held the job title of "Chief of Staff" to Deadeye.  He also held the job title of "Special Assistant to the President".  As such, he worked for both Deadeye and Bushie, in varying capacities and at varying times.  And could change hats about as quickly as I wrote this sentence.  (Kinda like insta-declassification, if you ask me) How many others were there like him, with dual-hatting of their job titles between the OVP and the EOP?  No one outside the administration really knows, it's fair to say.  What's to say that, the second most rational explanation for the super-secret DoJ opinions on Program X having been "rendered" to the President but winding up in the Vice-President's safes, is that the people to whom they were addressed, were dual-hatted and worked for the President as well as the Vice-President.  (BTW, the first most rational explanation would be that Deadeye was really running things, playing puppeteer to Bushie's puppet, and the addressing the opinions to Bushie is merely a convenient dodge.)

So, again, we have Deadeye playing his "in this dimension, but not in this dimension" Fourth Branch of Government thingy, to jerk everyone around.

DoJ memos, not "rendered to" OVP

10/4/01

11/2/01

1/9/02

5/17/02

10/11/02

2/25/03

3/15/04

5/6/04

7/16/04

2/4/05

Speculation on their contents?  

10/4/01:  "it's OK to do this"

11/2/01:  "make sure you get your search parameters drafted correctly"

3/15/04:  "no, this isn't illegal, despite what Comey's folks say"

5/6/04:  "new and improved program X;  now shuddup, you ninnies."

One more thing.  

When one writes a memorandum on the state of the law about anything, it's best to clearly delineate between the opinion of the author and the black-letter law.  When the lines dividing lawful from unlawful are legally indistinct because of a lack of judicial precedent interpreting a particular area of law and set of rules, the memorandum is mostly opinion.  A careful memorandum writer (i.e., one not reaching for a pre-ordained result) will delineate the competing opinions and schools of thought on the point of law.  That writer will also take care when opining on which interpretation is the "better" one, or which side of a particular argument has the better of the argument.  

We can be fairly sure, since it appears to all involved that John Yoo of Torture Memo infamy drafted the memos, these memos were slanted to a preordained result.  All one has to do is look up his writings in law reviews on presidential power and see where those come out.

Grist for the mill.