Spy vs Spy
Why not seek warrants? Perhaps because no court would grant them. We’ve seen these abuses in the past: Wiretaps on civil rights leaders, political opponents, anti-war protesters. That’s what the Church Committee found. That’s what the FISAC (Foreign Intelligence Security Act Court), a secret court whose purpose is to grant warrants for just such wiretaps as Bush claims he wants, was established to prevent. We know that not all those unwarranted wiretaps were against overseas communications involving foreign nationals: purely domestic calls were intercepted too.
Today’s news is that one of the judges (U.S. District Judge James Robertson) on that secret court has resigned in protest.
Dick “Vice President for Torture” Cheney and Alberto “The Torturer’s Friend” Gonzales like the program. They also like holding US citizens incommunicado, without charges and without counsel, for years. The excuse that “time is of the essence” in getting unwarranted phone taps is false: Under current law the President would have 72 hours retroactively to seek a warrant. All he’d need is a few signature, and there’s no reason to believe that he couldn’t get them if the requests were even marginally legitimate.
Even the right wing is in an uproar. The Chicago Tribune, under the headline “So Much for Protecting the Constitution,” says:
The facts of this case: In early 2002, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to monitor international telephone calls and international e-mail messages without any showing of probable cause to believe that a participant in the communication was involved in unlawful or terrorist activity, and without obtaining a search warrant from a court of law. This action was a direct violation of federal law and the United States Constitution.…
The rest is at Making Light ~~ a good read.
7 comments:
Guess Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter were also wrong too...
DEBUNKING THE EXECUTIVE ORDER MYTH: Conservative activist Matt Drudge yesterday posted the following headline on his popular website: "Clinton Executive Order: Secret Search on Americans Without Court Order." This is false. Drudge highlights one sentence from an executive order issued by President Clinton in February 1995: "The Attorney General is authorized to approve physical searches, without a court order." But the order also includes the following text: "Pursuant to section 302(a)(1) [50 U.S.C. 1822(a)] of the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance] Act (FISA), the Attorney General is authorized to approve physical searches, without a court order, to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year, if the Attorney General makes the certifications required by that section." That section of FISA requires the Attorney General to certify that the search will not involve "the premises, information, material, or property of a United States person." That means U.S. citizens or anyone inside of the United States. In stark contrast, Bush’s program permits, for the first time ever, warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens and other people inside of the United States. Neither Clinton’s 1995 executive order, nor President Carter's 1979 executive order (which Drudge also claims allows warrantless searches of Americans) authorizes that.
DEBUNKING THE GORELICK MYTH: A related argument was made yesterday by Byron York in a National Review article titled "Clinton Claimed Authority to Order No-Warrant Searches." The article cites then-Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick’s July 14, 1994 testimony that "the President has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes." Sen. Cornyn cited the testimony several times yesterday. What York obscures is that, at the time of Gorelick's testimony, physical searches were not covered under FISA. It’s not surprising that, in 1994, Gorelick argued that physical searches were not covered by FISA. They weren't. With Clinton’s backing, the law was amended in 1995 to include physical searches. The distinction is clear. The Clinton administration viewed FISA, a criminal statute, as the law. The Bush administration viewed FISA as a set of recommendations they could ignore.
DEBUNKING THE ECHELON MYTH: Another variation of the "Clinton did it" argument involves a top-secret surveillance program employed by the Clinton administration, code-named Echelon. The conservative outlet NewsMax presents the basic case: "During the 1990’s under President Clinton, the National Security Agency monitored millions of private phone calls placed by U.S. citizens and citizens of other countries under a super secret program code-named Echelon…all of it done without a court order, let alone a catalyst like the 9/11 attacks." This is false. The Echelon program complied with FISA. Before any conversations of U.S. persons were targeted, a FISA warrant was obtained. Then-CIA director George Tenet testified to this before Congress on 4/12/00: "We do not collect against U.S. persons unless they are agents of a foreign power as that term is defined in the law. We do not target their conversations for collection in the United States unless a FISA warrant has been obtained from the FISA court by the Justice Department."
http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/apps/nl/newsletter2.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=917053#3
(more with deep links)
Well, puddle. You're going to confuse your little pet troll with facts. You know very well they prefer to just make stuff up.
In case you haven't heard, the RNC press release about Clinton and Carter didn't tell the whole truth. Specifically, it left out a conditional clause which specified that American citizens were not to be searched.
Since this not telling the whole truth seems to be common practice by the Republicans, I think we should use this occasion to make the point loud and clear. It's such a clear-cut example that even Andrea Mitchell caught it. Just don't use a phrase such as "quote out of context." Ordinary folk don't know what that means.
BTW, the other members of the FISA court are going to hold a special meeting in a month to get an explanation from the Department of Justice about what's been going on. There's a concern, again, that illegally acquired information has been used to get the warrants that the court has issued.
amazing how many americans (and I use the small a for them) are so stuck in a 9/10/01 thinking mode.
But then what do you expect from amercicas fifth column (i mean so called progressives).
8:16 AM, December 22, 2005
Facinating! As soon as actual fact is introduced into the discussion, the level of discourse falls to name calling.
Sad, really.
fact...fact...as far as i can tell it is only opinions (and not very good ones at that).
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