Thirty years after the Church Committee unearthed COINTELPRO and other instances of illicit executive behavior at home and overseas, the Bush administration has elevated flaws of Cold War intelligence abuse into first principles of government.
The Bush administration has created a “secret presidency” run with classified presidential decisions and secret laws. A hyperactive Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice has aggressively expanded executive power. It has deployed a vision of unmitigated presidential authority inconsistent with the Constitution and the roots of the nation.
Unchecked and Unbalanced: Presidential Power in a Time of Terror puts today’s executive abuses in historical perspective and offers a road map for future accountability. Drawing on Fritz Schwarz’s experience with the Church Committee and Aziz Huq’s work with the Brennan Center’s Project on Liberty and National Security, it argues that restoring the checks and balances of American government will promote American liberty and security. Former Vice President Walter Mondale calls Unchecked and Unbalanced “a masterly account of the roots of contemporary executive overreaching. Schwarz and Huq clarify the stakes in the Bush administration’s radical and unprecedented vision of executive power.”
Please join the co-authors for an engaging discussion on the history of executive overreaching and the potential for the recently divided executive and congressional branches to restore real oversight and accountability to our government.
Featured Panelists:
Frederick A.O. Schwarz, Co-author, Unchecked and Unbalanced: Presidential Power in a Time of Terror
Aziz Huq, Co-author, Unchecked and Unbalanced: Presidential Power in a Time of Terror
Moderated by:
Morton H. Halperin, Senior Fellow and Director of Security and Peace Initiative, Center for American Progress