Brian Roehrkasse

Last updated • 1 min readFrom Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia

Brian J. Roehrkasse (born September 21, 1973) is a former government official who served as Director of Public Affairs for the United States Department of Justice during the last two years of the George W. Bush Administration (2007–2009).

Biography

Roehrkasse is from Urbandale, Iowa. He was on the campaign staff for George W. Bush in 2000. [1] From 2001 to 2002, Roehrkasse served in the Office of Public Affairs at the Department of Transportation. In 2002, he moved to the then newly created Department of Homeland Security where he served as press secretary. While at the Department of Homeland Security he was responsible for communicating sensitive intelligence and threat information [2] to the press during several heightened periods of threat. [3] [4] [5]

After serving as Deputy Director of Public Affairs at the Department of Jusctice during the dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy, he was promoted to director in 2007. [1] [6] While at the Department of Justice, he served as a communications strategist during the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act Reauthorization, [7] the modernization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act [8] and other significant national security and counterterrorism laws that remain in place under the Obama Administration. [9] He also served as a spokesperson for the Department on litigation concerning detainees suspected of engaging in terrorism. [10] [11] [12]

In 2013, Roehrkasse was a signatory to an amicus curiae brief submitted to the Supreme Court in support of same-sex marriage during the Hollingsworth v. Perry case. [13] Prior to working in Washington, Roehrkasse lived in San Diego and worked in the San Diego office of Porter Novelli. [14] He graduated from Colorado State University in 1996 with a bachelor's degree in journalism.

Related Research Articles

Tom Ridge 43rd Governor of Pennsylvania; first United States Secretary of Homeland Security

Thomas Joseph Ridge is an American politician and author who served as the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security from 2001 to 2003, and the first United States Secretary of Homeland Security from 2003 to 2005. Prior to this, Ridge was a member of the United States House of Representatives from 1983 to 1995 and the 43rd Governor of Pennsylvania from 1995 to 2001. He is a Republican.

Homeland Security Advisory System Terrorism alert warning system

In the United States, the Homeland Security Advisory System was a color-coded terrorism threat advisory scale. The different levels triggered specific actions by federal agencies and state and local governments, and they affected the level of security at some airports and other public facilities. It was often called the "terror alert level" by the U.S. media. The system was replaced on April 27, 2011, with a new system called the National Terrorism Advisory System.

Viet D. Dinh American lawyer

Viet D. Dinh is a lawyer and a legal scholar who is Chief Legal and Policy Officer of Fox Corporation and who served as an Assistant Attorney General of the United States from 2001 to 2003, under the presidency of George W. Bush. Born in Saigon, in former South Vietnam, he was the chief architect of the USA PATRIOT Act and is a former member of the Board of Directors of News Corporation.

Michael Chertoff American judge

Michael Chertoff is an American attorney who was the second United States Secretary of Homeland Security to serve under President George W. Bush. He was the co-author of the USA PATRIOT Act. Chertoff previously served as a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, as a federal prosecutor, and as Assistant U.S. Attorney General. He succeeded Tom Ridge as U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security on February 15, 2005.

Frances Townsend

Frances M. "Fran" Fragos Townsend is an American lawyer and business executive who served as Homeland Security Advisor to United States President George W. Bush from 2004 to 2007, and is currently executive vice president for corporate affairs at Activision Blizzard. She previously served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Combating Terrorism. In 2008, Townsend joined CNN as a contributor, but later switched over to CBS where she was a national security analyst for them. Townsend was president of the Counter Extremism Project.

Controversial invocations of the Patriot Act

The following are controversial invocations of the USA PATRIOT Act. The stated purpose of the Act is to "deter and punish terrorist acts in the United States and around the world, to enhance law enforcement investigatory tools, and for other purposes." One criticism of the Act is that "other purposes" often includes the detection and prosecution of non-terrorist alleged future crimes.

NSA warrantless surveillance (2001–2007)

NSA warrantless surveillance — also commonly referred to as "warrantless-wiretapping" or "-wiretaps" — refers to the surveillance of persons within the United States, including U.S. citizens, during the collection of notionally foreign intelligence by the National Security Agency (NSA) as part of the Terrorist Surveillance Program. In late 2001, the NSA was authorized to monitor, without obtaining a FISA warrant, the phone calls, Internet activity, text messages and other communication involving any party believed by the NSA to be outside the U.S., even if the other end of the communication lay within the U.S.

James Risen American journalist

James Risen is an American journalist for The Intercept. He previously worked for The New York Times and before that for Los Angeles Times. He has written or co-written many articles concerning U.S. government activities and is the author or co-author of two books about the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and a book about the American public debate about abortion. Risen is a Pulitzer Prize winner.

National security letter

A national security letter (NSL) is an administrative subpoena issued by the United States government to gather information for national security purposes. NSLs do not require prior approval from a judge. The Stored Communications Act, Fair Credit Reporting Act, and Right to Financial Privacy Act authorize the United States government to seek such information that is "relevant" to authorized national security investigations. By law, NSLs can request only non-content information, for example, transactional records and phone numbers dialed, but never the content of telephone calls or e-mails.

David S. Kris

David S. Kris is an American lawyer. From 2009 to 2011, he served as the United States Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division of the United States Department of Justice. He also served as the Associate Deputy Attorney General for national security issues at the Department of Justice from 2000 to 2003.

Philip Jonathan Perry is an American attorney and was a political appointee in the administration of George W. Bush. He was acting associate attorney general at the Department of Justice, general counsel of the Office of Management and Budget, and general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security. He is a partner at Latham & Watkins in Washington, D.C. He has handled matters before the U.S. Supreme Court, the U.S. Courts of Appeals, and U.S. District Courts across the country. He is known both for his pioneering work litigating biotechnology issues and his work on constitutional and federal regulatory matters. Perry was named a "Litigation Trailblazer" by the National Law Journal in 2018 for his "remarkable successes" in litigation, and has seen continued success in 2019, winning cases in both federal appellate and trial courts. He is the husband of Congresswoman Liz Cheney and the son-in-law of former Vice President Dick Cheney.

On December 7, 2006, the George W. Bush Administration's Department of Justice ordered the unprecedented midterm dismissal of seven United States attorneys. Congressional investigations focused on whether the Department of Justice and the White House were using the U.S. Attorney positions for political advantage. Allegations were that some of the attorneys were targeted for dismissal to impede investigations of Republican politicians or that some were targeted for their failure to initiate investigations that would damage Democratic politicians or hamper Democratic-leaning voters. The U.S. attorneys were replaced with interim appointees, under provisions in the 2005 USA PATRIOT Act reauthorization.

Tim Griffin 20th Lieutenant Governor of Arkansas

John Timothy Griffin is an American lawyer and politician serving as the 20th and current Lieutenant Governor of Arkansas since 2015. A member of the Republican Party, he previously was the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas between 2006 and 2007 and U.S. Representative for Arkansas's 2nd congressional district from 2011 to 2015. Griffin defeated Democrat John Burkhalter in 2014 and has served under Governor Asa Hutchinson since holding the lieutenant governorship. In summer 2020, Griffin announced his candidacy for the 2022 Arkansas gubernatorial election, but withdrew from the race in February 2021 to run for Arkansas Attorney General instead.

Tracy A. Henke

Tracy A. Henke, a native of Moscow Mills, Missouri, was a government official holding held high-level positions in the United States Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security. She currently serves as the Legislative Director for United States Senator Roy Blunt from the State of Missouri.

A detailed chronology of events in the dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy.

Eric Lichtblau is an American journalist, reporting for The New York Times in the Washington bureau, as well as the Los Angeles Times, Time magazine, The New Yorker, and the CNN network's investigative news unit. He has earned two Pulitzer Prizes for his work. He received a Pulitzer Prize in 2006 with the New York Times for his reporting on warrantless wiretapping by the National Security Agency. He also was part of the New York Times team that won the Pulitzer in 2017 for coverage of Russia and the Trump campaign. He is the author of Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice, and The Nazis Next Door: How America Became a Safe Haven for Hitler's Men.

History of the Patriot Act

The history of the USA PATRIOT Act involved many parties who opposed and supported the legislation, which was proposed, enacted and signed into law 45 days after the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001. The USA PATRIOT Act, though approved by large majorities in the U.S. Senate and House of Representative, was controversial, and parts of the law were invalidated or modified by successful legal challenges over constitutional infringements to civil liberties. The Act had several sunset provisions, most reauthorized by the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005 and the USA PATRIOT Act Additional Reauthorizing Amendments Act. Both reauthorizations incorporated amendments to the original USA PATRIOT Act, and other federal laws.

Thomas Tamm is a public defender in Washington County, Maryland. He formerly worked as an attorney in the United States Department of Justice (USDOJ) Office of Intelligence Policy and Review during 2004 when senior Justice officials responded to the warrantless NSA surveillance concerning eavesdropping on U.S. citizens. He was an anonymous whistleblower to The New York Times, making the initial disclosures which led to reporters winning Pulitzer Prizes in 2006. Although Maryland agreed to drop ethics charges against him in 2009 relating to those disclosures, and the USDOJ announced it had dropped its investigation in 2011, the D.C. Office of Bar Counsel announced in January 2016 that it had brought disciplinary charges against Tamm relating to those events. Despite some controversy with respect to politicisation of that office and similar charges being brought to silence attorney whistleblowers especially beginning in 2014, Tamm in March 2016 agreed to public censure by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals in order to allow him to proceed with his life and career.

Juliette Kayyem

Juliette N. Kayyem is a former bureaucrat, author and host of the WGBH podcast The SCIF. She serves as a national security analyst for CNN and is a weekly guest on Boston Public Radio. She is the Belfer Lecturer in International Security at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Pacific Council on International Policy. She is a former candidate for Governor of Massachusetts and a former Boston Globe columnist, writing about issues of national security and foreign affairs for the op-ed page.

Rachel Brand American attorney

Rachel Lee Brand is an American lawyer, academic, and former government official. She served as the United States Associate Attorney General from May 22, 2017, until February 20, 2018, when she resigned to take a job as head of global corporate governance at Walmart. Brand was the first woman to serve as Associate Attorney General. She also served as Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy in the George W. Bush administration and was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. Prior to becoming Associate Attorney General, Brand was an associate professor at Antonin Scalia Law School.

References

  1. 1 2 Al Kamen (2007-08-10). "Campaigning by the Book / Moving Up". The Washington Post . Retrieved 2009-10-21.
  2. ↑ "Experts Seeking Dirty Bombs in Cities". USA Today . Associated Press. January 7, 2004. Retrieved 2009-10-22.
  3. ↑ RACHEL L. SWARNS (January 2, 2004). "2 More Flights Are Called Off After Warnings". The New York Times . Retrieved 2009-10-21.
  4. ↑ "Security report outlines terror scenarios". USA Today . Associated Press. March 16, 2005. Retrieved 2009-10-22.
  5. ↑ Andrea Stone (December 26, 2003). "More Flights Could be Cancelled Amid Warnings". USA Today . Retrieved 2009-10-22.
  6. ↑ Paul Kiel (2007-08-30). "DoJ Officials Resign, But Mouthpiece Promoted". Talking Points Memo . TPM Media LLC. Archived from the original on 2009-09-13. Retrieved Oct 21, 2009.
  7. ↑ Charles Babington (February 10, 2006). "Patriot Act Compromise Clears Way For Senate Vote". The Washington Post . Retrieved 2009-10-21.
  8. ↑ JAMES RISEN and ERIC LICHTBLAU (August 19, 2007). "Concerns Raised on Wider Spying Under New Law". The New York Times . Retrieved 2009-10-21.
  9. ↑ ERIC LICHTBLAU (September 15, 2008). "Terror Plan Would Give F.B.I. More Power". The New York Times . Retrieved 2009-10-24.
  10. ↑ ADAM LIPTAK (July 16, 2008). "Court Backs Bush on Military Detentions". The New York Times . Retrieved 2009-10-21.
  11. ↑ "Statement by Brian Roehrkasse, Director of Public Affairs, on (the) District Court Decision Ordering Release of the Uighurs Detained at Guantanamo Bay" (Press release). United States Department of Justice. October 7, 2008. Retrieved 2009-10-21.
  12. ↑ "Statement by Brian Roehrkasse, Director of Public Affairs, on (the) Decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in Al-marri V. Pucciarelli" (Press release). United States Department of Justice. July 15, 2008. Retrieved 2009-10-24.
  13. ↑ Avlon, John (28 February 2013). "The Pro-Freedom Republicans Are Coming: 131 Sign Gay Marriage Brief". The Daily Beast.
  14. ↑ Diane Bell (2007-04-10). "At the White House". The San Diego Union-Tribune . Retrieved Oct 21, 2009.("Another former Hutchens' employee from the late '90s, Brian Roehrkasse, is also in the Washington, D.C., spotlight as the chief spokesman for the Department of Justice and beleaguered Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.")
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.