During the U.S. Senate debate over the PATRIOT Act renewal on May 24, Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) told his fellow Senators: "There is secret law where, in effect, the interpretation of the law, as it stands today, is kept secret. So here we are, Senators on the floor, and we have colleagues of both political parties wanting to participate. Certainly, if you are an American, you are in Oregon or Colorado, you are listening in, you want to be part of this discussion. But yet the executive branch keeps secret how they are interpreting the law."
Secret PATRIOT Act? What was Wyden talking about?
The American people aren’t allowed to know. But they got a taste of how it could be used to suppress freedom a month later, when the New York Times reported on June 16 that former CIA supervisor Glenn L. Carle accused senior Bush administration officials of trolling secret CIA files for negative information about one of its public critics, University of Michigan Professor Juan Cole.
Click here to read the entire article.
Photo of Michael Hayden: AP Images
