Like FBI, CIA Has Used Secret 'Letters' Resent-Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 10:33:34 -0600 (CST) News Updates from Citizens for Legitimate Government 25 Jan 2008 http://www.legitgov.org/ http://www.legitgov.org/index.html#breaking_news Like FBI, CIA Has Used Secret 'Letters' 25 Jan 2008 Newly released documents shed light on the use of national security letters by the CIA. The spy agency has employed them to obtain financial information about U.S. residents and does so under extraordinary secrecy, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which obtained copies of CIA letters under the Freedom of Information Act. The CIA's requests for financial records come with "gag orders" on the recipients, said ACLU lawyer Melissa Goodman. In many cases, she said, the recipient is not allowed to keep a copy of the letter or even take notes about the information turned over to the CIA. Phone Firms' Bid for Immunity in Wiretaps Gains Ground 25 Jan 2008 The Senate signaled in a key vote yesterday that it supports giving some of the nation's largest telephone companies immunity from dozens of privacy lawsuits related to a federal domestic eavesdropping program initiated after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In a 60 to 36 vote -- with 12 DemocRATs joining Republicans in the majority -- the Senate rejected a version of the proposed legislation sponsored by Democrats on the Judiciary Committee. That bill omitted immunity for the telecommunications firms involved in warrantless eavesdropping. [From Glenn Greenwald's blog: As usual, just enough Democrats -- roughly 12 -- voted in favor in order to ensure that the Motion passed while enabling Democrats generally to pretend that they opposed it. All GOP Senators voted in favor. The pro-immunity, pro-warrantless eavesdropping Democrats: Rockefeller, Pryor, Inouye, McCaskill, Landrieu, Salazar, Nelson (FL), Nelson (NE), Mikulski, Carper, Bayh, and Johnson. Neither Clinton nor Obama bothered to show up for any of this.] Judge wants answers on CIA videotapes 24 Jan 2008 A federal judge said Thursday that CIA interrogation videotapes may have been relevant to his court case, and he gave the Bush regime three weeks to explain why they were destroyed in 2005 and say whether other evidence was destroyed. The decision is a legal setback for the Bush regime, which has urged courts not to get involved. Immigration officials detaining, deporting American citizens 24 Jan 2008 Thomas Warziniack was born in Minnesota and grew up in Georgia, but immigration authorities pronounced him an illegal immigrant from Russia. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has held Warziniack for weeks in an Arizona detention facility with the aim of deporting him to a country he's never seen. His jailers shrugged off Warziniack's claims that he was an American citizen, even though they could have retrieved his Minnesota birth certificate in minutes and even though a Colorado court had concluded that he was a U.S. citizen a year before it shipped him to Arizona. [See graphic: U.S citizens detained? See Gallery: Are U.S. citizens being deported to foreign countries?] Please forward this update to anyone you think might be interested. Those who'd like to be added to the Newsletter list can sign up: http://www.legitgov.org/#subscribe_clg. Please write to: signup@legitgov.org for inquiries. CLG Newsletter editor: Lori Price, Manager. Copyright ) 2008, Citizens For Legitimate Government . All rights reserved. CLG Founder and Chair is Michael Rectenwald, Ph.D.