“Spy”, 1878-1879, by Vasily Vereshchagin, oil on canvas, published by The Museum of Russian Art, Kiev, Ukraine, at http://www.abcgallery.com
The Senate resolution on Agent Doble’s testimony on the Garci tapes is now mired in the Rules Committee and until it gets out of there, all discussion is futile. (to be fair, it’s obvious that many of the “presidentiables” are, this early, “positioning” or “pre-positioning” themselves for 2010; “all the world’s a stage”).
The matter was tossed there because administration senators said that the senators would be/ might get criminally liable if they play/ possess/ communicate the contents of the Garci tapes.
The tapes have been marked as exhibits and played in the House hearings. Everybody has a copy of parts of the conversation; the entire nation communicated its contents; it’s kinda unmanageable to cause a prosecution now.
But it’s the Rules Committee. Let’s be hypothetical, academic, theoretical, out-of-touch with reality, and engage those who are “afraid” of incurring criminal liability for communicating the contents of the Garci tapes.
The overt acts punishable in RA 4200 are (I short-handed this, just read the entire law, the words are plain) : 1.to tap any wire or cable; or 2. overhear, intercept, or record such communication by using a tape recorder, etc., 3. to knowingly possess such; 4. to replay the same; 5. to communicate the contents.
I wasn’t able to listen to the privilege speech or listen carefully to any discussions on it (soweee), but as I understand it, the following are sought to be investigated:
1.whether or not the MIG 21 team of Agent Doble conducted such an operation or tapped the phones of Garci and other individuals.
2.if they did, who ordered it? what other phones were tapped?
3.was this an S.O.P.? for how long now?
4.what equipment was used and how was it conducted?
5.whether or not the phone companies or any of their personnel were in on it?
6.whether or not Agent Doble’s family or families were indeed detained by the military to coerce Agent Doble to turn around; and who were involved in the detention.
If you were a fiscal or prosecutor investigating whether or not any illegal wiretapping had been committed by military agents, would you yourself (the fiscal/ prosecutor), if you marked the tapes as exhibits since you were investigating the fact of wiretapping, be criminally liable for possession? As long as you don’t communicate the contents, no.
If the senators are going to investigate the fact of wiretapping and not anymore the contents thereof which have been extensively covered by the House and published completely and discussed nationwide, then they don’t run into the overt acts; now if somebody during the Senate investigation asked, what again did the woman who sounded like Gloria say in the tapes, what did she say again; an objection can be raised. Then ruled upon. There’s a thousand ways of going about this.
And the procedure is a lot simpler than you think.
It’s the fact of who ordered the wiretaps, if it were the Commander-in-Chief who ordered those wiretaps, (or, who approved the S.O.P. but just forgot about it when she made the calls) that would make the issue of criminal liability “complicated”; who would be criminally liable, just the underlings and the listeners and the public but not the mastermind?
