Worthless Defense

[TexasTiger 13,000]

Spies, Lies and Wiretaps

Published: January 29, 2006

A bit over a week ago, President Bush and his men promised to provide the legal, constitutional and moral justifications for the sort of warrantless spying on Americans that has been illegal for nearly 30 years. Instead, we got the familiar mix of political spin, clumsy historical misinformation, contemptuous dismissals of civil liberties concerns, cynical attempts to paint dissents as anti-American and pro-terrorist, and a couple of big, dangerous lies.

The first was that the domestic spying program is carefully aimed only at people who are actively working with Al Qaeda, when actually it has violated the rights of countless innocent Americans. And the second was that the Bush team could have prevented the 9/11 attacks if only they had thought of eavesdropping without a warrant.

Sept. 11 could have been prevented. This is breathtakingly cynical. The nation's guardians did not miss the 9/11 plot because it takes a few hours to get a warrant to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mail messages. They missed the plot because they were not looking. The same officials who now say 9/11 could have been prevented said at the time that no one could possibly have foreseen the attacks. We keep hoping that Mr. Bush will finally lay down the bloody banner of 9/11, but Karl Rove, who emerged from hiding recently to talk about domestic spying, made it clear that will not happen — because the White House thinks it can make Democrats look as though they do not want to defend America. "President Bush believes if Al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they're calling and why," he told Republican officials. "Some important Democrats clearly disagree."

Mr. Rove knows perfectly well that no Democrat has ever said any such thing — and that nothing prevented American intelligence from listening to a call from Al Qaeda to the United States, or a call from the United States to Al Qaeda, before Sept. 11, 2001, or since. The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act simply required the government to obey the Constitution in doing so. And FISA was amended after 9/11 to make the job much easier.

Only bad guys are spied on. Bush officials have said the surveillance is tightly focused only on contacts between people in this country and Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Vice President Dick Cheney claimed it saved thousands of lives by preventing attacks. But reporting in this paper has shown that the National Security Agency swept up vast quantities of e-mail messages and telephone calls and used computer searches to generate thousands of leads. F.B.I. officials said virtually all of these led to dead ends or to innocent Americans. The biggest fish the administration has claimed so far has been a crackpot who wanted to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch — a case that F.B.I. officials said was not connected to the spying operation anyway.

The spying is legal. The secret program violates the law as currently written. It's that simple. In fact, FISA was enacted in 1978 to avoid just this sort of abuse. It said that the government could not spy on Americans by reading their mail (or now their e-mail) or listening to their telephone conversations without obtaining a warrant from a special court created for this purpose. The court has approved tens of thousands of warrants over the years and rejected a handful.

As amended after 9/11, the law says the government needs probable cause, the constitutional gold standard, to believe the subject of the surveillance works for a foreign power or a terrorist group, or is a lone-wolf terrorist. The attorney general can authorize electronic snooping on his own for 72 hours and seek a warrant later. But that was not good enough for Mr. Bush, who lowered the standard for spying on Americans from "probable cause" to "reasonable belief" and then cast aside the bedrock democratic principle of judicial review.

Just trust us. Mr. Bush made himself the judge of the proper balance between national security and Americans' rights, between the law and presidential power. He wants Americans to accept, on faith, that he is doing it right. But even if the United States had a government based on the good character of elected officials rather than law, Mr. Bush would not have earned that kind of trust. The domestic spying program is part of a well-established pattern: when Mr. Bush doesn't like the rules, he just changes them, as he has done for the detention and treatment of prisoners and has threatened to do in other areas, like the confirmation of his judicial nominees. He has consistently shown a lack of regard for privacy, civil liberties and judicial due process in claiming his sweeping powers. The founders of our country created the system of checks and balances to avert just this sort of imperial arrogance.

The rules needed to be changed. In 2002, a Republican senator — Mike DeWine of Ohio — introduced a bill that would have done just that, by lowering the standard for issuing a warrant from probable cause to "reasonable suspicion" for a "non-United States person." But the Justice Department opposed it, saying the change raised "both significant legal and practical issues" and may have been unconstitutional. Now, the president and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales are telling Americans that reasonable suspicion is a perfectly fine standard for spying on Americans as well as non-Americans — and they are the sole judges of what is reasonable.

So why oppose the DeWine bill? Perhaps because Mr. Bush had already secretly lowered the standard of proof — and dispensed with judges and warrants — for Americans and non-Americans alike, and did not want anyone to know.

War changes everything. Mr. Bush says Congress gave him the authority to do anything he wanted when it authorized the invasion of Afghanistan. There is simply nothing in the record to support this ridiculous argument.

The administration also says that the vote was the start of a war against terrorism and that the spying operation is what Mr. Cheney calls a "wartime measure." That just doesn't hold up. The Constitution does suggest expanded presidential powers in a time of war. But the men who wrote it had in mind wars with a beginning and an end. The war Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney keep trying to sell to Americans goes on forever and excuses everything.

Other presidents did it. Mr. Gonzales, who had the incredible bad taste to begin his defense of the spying operation by talking of those who plunged to their deaths from the flaming twin towers, claimed historic precedent for a president to authorize warrantless surveillance. He mentioned George Washington, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt. These precedents have no bearing on the current situation, and Mr. Gonzales's timeline conveniently ended with F.D.R., rather than including Richard Nixon, whose surveillance of antiwar groups and other political opponents inspired FISA in the first place. Like Mr. Nixon, Mr. Bush is waging an unpopular war, and his administration has abused its powers against antiwar groups and even those that are just anti-Republican.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is about to start hearings on the domestic spying. Congress has failed, tragically, on several occasions in the last five years to rein in Mr. Bush and restore the checks and balances that are the genius of American constitutional democracy. It is critical that it not betray the public once again on this score.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/opinion/...gewanted=2&_r=1

[DKW 86 7,440]

Sept. 11 could have been prevented. This is breathtakingly cynical. The nation's guardians did not miss the 9/11 plot because it takes a few hours to get a warrant to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mail messages. They missed the plot because they were not looking. The same officials who now say 9/11 could have been prevented said at the time that no one could possibly have foreseen the attacks. We keep hoping that Mr. Bush will finally lay down the bloody banner of 9/11, but Karl Rove, who emerged from hiding recently to talk about domestic spying, made it clear that will not happen — because the White House thinks it can make Democrats look as though they do not want to defend America. "President Bush believes if Al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they're calling and why," he told Republican officials. "Some important Democrats clearly disagree."

Yes, if it wasnt for an incompetent Clinton Administration that DID nothing back in 1992-2000, especially 1996 when we had him in our hands and did NOTHING!

They missed the plot because they were not looking.

I agree, the Clinton and Bush 41 admins, were not paying attention to himor Al-qaeda. Bush 43 was barely even into power when the attacks that were planned in 1996 to counteract Clinton policies.

"Defeat and Retreat in 2006" sounds strongly like victory to me.

[TexasTiger 13,000]

Sept. 11 could have been prevented. This is breathtakingly cynical. The nation's guardians did not miss the 9/11 plot because it takes a few hours to get a warrant to eavesdrop on phone calls and e-mail messages. They missed the plot because they were not looking. The same officials who now say 9/11 could have been prevented said at the time that no one could possibly have foreseen the attacks. We keep hoping that Mr. Bush will finally lay down the bloody banner of 9/11, but Karl Rove, who emerged from hiding recently to talk about domestic spying, made it clear that will not happen — because the White House thinks it can make Democrats look as though they do not want to defend America. "President Bush believes if Al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they're calling and why," he told Republican officials. "Some important Democrats clearly disagree."

Yes, if it wasnt for an incompetent Clinton Administration that DID nothing back in 1992-2000, especially 1996 when we had him in our hands and did NOTHING!

They missed the plot because they were not looking.

I agree, the Clinton and Bush 41 admins, were not paying attention to himor Al-qaeda. Bush 43 was barely even into power when the attacks that were planned in 1996 to counteract Clinton policies.

"Defeat and Retreat in 2006" sounds strongly like victory to me.

215466[/snapback]

Your head is truly up your ass on this issue. Clinton was three weeks into office when the WTC was attacked the first time. There were no more attacks on US soil for the next 8 years. Bush was in office for 8 months when 9/11 happened. In that time, and before, he had NEVER even mentioned Al Qaeda. He ended the program Able Danger in his first month and totally took his eye off of the ball. You don't necessary stop planning. You might stop implementation.

[DKW 86 7,440]

USS Cole wasnt American soil? Khobar Towers? Etc? African Emabassy attacks, that wasnt US soil?

I see how you masquerade as open minded. But Tex, Clinton did nothing. He bombed an aspirin factory just to get ML off the front page. He left 400-800K todie in Rwanda and did nothing. His transfer of power briefings to the Bush WH barely mentioned OBL. He had the guy in his hands in 1996 and did nothing. We would not be here if he had the balls to take this scumbag out.

[TexasTiger 13,000]

USS Cole wasnt American soil? Khobar Towers? Etc? African Emabassy attacks, that wasnt US soil?

I see how you masquerade as open minded. But Tex, Clinton did nothing. He bombed an aspirin factory just to get ML off the front page. He left 400-800K todie in Rwanda and did nothing. His transfer of power briefings to the Bush WH barely mentioned OBL. He had the guy in his hands in 1996 and did nothing. We would not be here if he had the balls to take this scumbag out.

215511[/snapback]

Actually, I'm very open to the view that the last three administrations could have done more in regard to the Al Qaeda threat. Your post that I was responding to wants to put 9/11 solely on Clinton because the current President who had never even mentioned the Al Qaeda threat and was coming of a one month vacation after only 7 months on the job was just "barely into power."

I'd love to be "barely" into a job and have the right to a one month vacation.

All available evidence shows Clinton and Bush I paid far more attention to Al Qaeda than Bush II did before 9/11. One can critique his/their response if they wish, but for you to say they weren't paying attention and Bushco was just too new to the job, is grossly partisan denial and excuse making. Your mind is tight as a drum on this issue.

[Tiger in Spain 0]

I walked right into a job with a guaranteed 30 day vacation a year.

Answer David's question, Tex. USS Cole wasn't American soil? Khobar Towers? Etc? African Embassy attacks, that wasn't US soil?

What else are you going to attempt to blame on Bush? Man, you have been kissing BC's butt so much here lately that I'm almost tempted to start calling you Monica.