Bush Returns to “NI” Strategy on War on Terror

Dear President Bush,

I noted you dredged up your “No Information/No Invite” Strategy previously used on secret prisons in Europe and Guantanamo Bay. The occasion for the rehashing of this successful dodge concerns lawsuits into secret spying here at home by the National Security Agency.

Did you learn the strategy during your college days at Yale when Monty Python was all the rage? Did their Knights Who Say “Ni” serve as the inspiration for your defense strategy. In the movie, Monty Python and The Holy Grail the three headed knight spoke a most powerful word, capable of driving away even the most dangerous, heinous opponent.

It appears the NSA employed the Knights, as to date it has turned away the Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission. Were their investigators driven away in a verbal assault of “Ni’s”?

In an odd twist, the just spurned Justice Department is now saying “Ni” on behalf of the National Security Agency? They told the judge it would be impossible to defend the legality of the program without disclosing classified information that could be of value to suspected terrorists.

This is the same justice department that could not get security clearance to conduct an investigation. How did they learn so much, that they now know the program is legal? How did they learn so much that they now know defending the program would disclose valuable classified information? How does it work they can’t get in to conduct an investigation but they can get in to conduct a defense?

This can’t be the first trial in the history of our country dealing with classified information. What procedures are in place that allow laws to be administered, judged legal or not, in cases where classified information exists?

P.S. National Intelligence Director John Negroponte issued an edict on behalf of your administration writing that disclosure of such information would cause “exceptionally grave damage” to national security. Is it just a coincidence that National Intelligence is abbreviated as “Ni”?