Bush hauled the New York Times into the White House to stop them from reporting the domestic spy story… not because he feared for national security, but because he didn’t want to be embarrased. What the hell?
The problem was not that the disclosures would compromise national security, as Bush claimed at his press conference. His comparison to the damaging pre-9/11 revelation of Osama bin Laden s use of a satellite phone, which caused bin Laden to change tactics, is fallacious; any Americans with ties to Muslim extremists in fact, all American Muslims, period have long since suspected that the U.S. government might be listening in to their conversations. Bush claimed that the fact that we are discussing this program is helping the enemy. But there is simply no evidence, or even reasonable presumption, that this is so. And rather than the leaking being a shameful act, it was the work of a patriot inside the government who was trying to stop a presidential power grab.
No, Bush was desperate to keep the Times from running this important story which the paper had already inexplicably held for a year because he knew that it would reveal him as a law-breaker. He insists he had legal authority derived from the Constitution and congressional resolution authorizing force. But the Constitution explicitly requires the president to obey the law. And the post 9/11 congressional resolution authorizing all necessary force in fighting terrorism was made in clear reference to military intervention. It did not scrap the Constitution and allow the president to do whatever he pleased in any area in the name of fighting terrorism.
I think at long last we need to really talk about whether the president broke the law and if he should be prosecuted for that.
ALSO: The NYT held the story ahead of the 2004 election. Way to go, liberal media, can’t let the facts get in the way of re-election for the jackasses!
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JD: Ever watch Fox?
Should Clinton have been prosecuted for the same thing?
“In July 1994 Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick told the House Select Committee on Intelligence that the president “has inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches for foreign intelligence purposes.” [51] According to Gorelick, the president (or his attorney general) need only satisfy himself that an American is working in conjunction with a foreign power before a search can take place. . . .”
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-271.html
Oliver : Occasionally I do, yes. Why ?
The wiretapping isn’t even really the issue. As the writer in the cut text asserts, it is highly unlikely that al-Qaida operatives didn’t expect to be under threat of wiretap. Revealing that we use electronic surveillance to seek out terrorists isn’t even dog-bites-man. It’s barely dog-bites-dog.
The issue is that the president didn’t feel he was subject to the official channels set down by law to go about this. The system in place offers a wide array of government options for wiretapping, and the only thing it also has that the Bush method doesn’t is a paper trail and oversight.
So the question remains: why would Bush want to employ a system that had no accountability whatsoever?
Did Bush lie?
Bush speech, April 20, 2004:
Secondly, there are such things as roving wiretaps. Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires — a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so. It’s important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.
In this context, both legal and pragmatic concerns are rendered moot. The Bush administration has long since proven that it cares little for the law. To the Republicans in general, “rule of law ” means that “those who rule get to decide when and how they’ll follow the law.”
From a pragmatic angle, remember that all three branches of the federal government are controlled by the Rethugs. Expecting any one branch to check or balance another is wishful thinking. The only hope for people willing to use their God-given sense is to get up and vote against these bastards (and any Dems who have been facilitating their nonsense). Let’s hope that happens in ‘06 and ‘08, and that all the years of Rethug gerrymandering and election-rigging don’t continue to keep our country at the beck and call of the ignorant, mean-spirited minority.
buma : If we were to accept your premise as accurate, then the use of Echelon likely brought about the same concerns to you previously.
I love how the writer in the piece that Oliver cut and pasted from gets to not only presume the motives, but assert to the contrary what Bush’s motives were.
“If we were to accept your premise as accurate, then the use of Echelon likely brought about the same concerns to you previously.”
Why would it? It was used legally by Clinton - not so with Bush’ s going around FISA. Wobbly spin, there buddy. Better practice more.
Let the chips fall where they will. If Bush was “honorable” in his use of extra-Constitutional / dictatorial power, then let’s have him swear to that under oath. Of course there is little in Bush’s track record to indicate anything “honorable” occurred. If this was a Democratic president, the GOP would be howling to see head on a pike. The IOKIYAR doctine keeps getting stretched to new extremes.
The emerging bloggy conventional wisdom is that the technology outran the law.
It goes like this: Bush authorized the NSA to use technology that sifted mountains of data to sniff out indicators of potential threats. From that source, the snoopers narrowed their focus on a few hundred likely targets.
However, the FISA court said that information gathered from the wide sweep couldn’t be used as evidence to request a warrant on specific targets. In other words, the government can’t use what it overhears to get authorization to snoop further.
Allow me to propose a pragmatic view instead of a legalistic one.
As long as the President can plausibly claim that all of the snooping done by the NSA targeted people with “known links to al Qaeda,” a prosecution or impeachment is an absolute non-starter.
The defense will amount to: “The liberals are trying to stop the President from beating the terrorists!”
However, the operative word is “plausibly.” If even a scrap of evidence surfaces that this surveillance targeted political opponents, this story will take a major, irreversible turn.
April 14, 2004 meeting of the September 11 Commission, in which a commission staffer read some the panel’s preliminary findings. Among those findings was the conclusion that, even after the reforms of the Patriot Act, the FISA application process was “long and slow”:
“Many agents in the field told us that although there is now less hesitancy in seeking approval for electronic surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, the application process nonetheless continues to be long and slow. Requests for such approvals are overwhelming the ability of the system to process them and to conduct the surveillance. The Department of Justice and FBI are attempting to address bottlenecks in the process.”
Here’s the thing, then: Bush could have asked Congress–a Republican-held Congress, flush at the height of Bush’s wartime popularity–to change the FISA law. He could have built it into the first PATRIOT Act. He could have done any number of things to ask for the law to meet the technology, and he would have gotten it.
So why didn’t he? Why is it important that he be allowed these secrets, and these shields from the checks and balances system? Who was he spying on, besides known terrorist contacts?
(Maybe nobody. But then why hide it?)
Did they not report this to the appropriate parties overseeing the FISA every 45 days ?
Remember, FISA was enacted in 1978 as a response to the abuse of Executive privilege by Richard Milhouse Nixon. Is it any wonder Bush wants to circumvent?
“Should Clinton have been prosecuted for the same thing?”
Nixon, Reagan and Bush have all precipitated “knee-jerk’ congressional
actions to reign in the Executive Branch after abuses of the privileges accorded that office have surfaced.
This is an administration rife with control freaks.
Secrecy is a sometimes dicey method of control.
Many of our processes are long and slow. Either you fix them or you suck it up–and if you’re the president, one would expect you to do the former.
What you do not do is decide you get different laws than the rest of America.
The Gorelick Myth
In the National Review, Byron York has an article called Clinton Claimed Authority to Order No-Warrant Searches. In it, he cites then-Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick s July 14, 1994 testimony where she argues the President has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes. (This afternoon, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) quoted her testimony on the Senate floor.)
Here is what York obscures: at the time of Gorelick s testimony, physical searches weren t covered under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). It s not surprising that, in 1994, Gorelick argued that physical searches weren t covered by FISA. They weren t. With Clinton s backing, the law was amended in 1995 to include physical searches.
York claims that, after the law was amended, the Clinton administration did not back down from its contention that the president had the authority to act when necessary. That s false. Neither Gorelick or the Clinton administration ever argued that president s inherent authority allowed him to ignore FISA. (We ve posted the full text of Gorelick s testimony here).
Forgot to include the link, here it is…
http://thinkprogress.org/gorelick-testimony/
Are we not jumping well ahead of ourselves in assuming that these conversations involved your normal everday citizens ?
Strange, Clinton did not act in secrecy, examples of his warrantless searches were ruled on by courts in quick order, and Clinton ceased the prohibited methods and looked for new, legal ways to do what he wanted. Bush on the other hand, kept his activities secret, kept his activities from judicial oversight, kept his activities from proper legislative action and review, and now claims he can continue to do these activities. If the law was ineffective, legislative action at the request of the President could have been undertaken to change the law or streamline the process, if it was a major security concern, changes could have been worked on concurrently with this shady program to bring it in line legally and constitutionally. But Bush let this go on for 3 years and never asked for changes in the law, only waiting to be caught to say there was a problem with the overseeing law. It simply doesn’t pass the smell test.
Who was Bush spying on? Without judicial review and accountability we have no assurance that it wasn’t political opponents or other inappropriate targets. And guess what apologists, I don’t have to prove that happened, Bush has to prove that it didn’t happen, because the reason warrants are necessary is to prevent that kind of abuse, and if the law is broken by our government officials, the burden shifts to them to show the motives and effects were not misplaced.
What comes after the Blame Clinton defense? Do we go back to “no crime was commited” or “no one has been convicted” or is there some other excuse in the chain?
Quakers are dangerous. My kid goes to a Quaker school. Bush’s minions know what I’m going to post even before I hit the Submit Comment button.
WTF? It’s the Cheney Administration already. Bush is the aw-shuckin’ figurehead, as he was for the ownership of the Texas Rangers.
“Are we not jumping well ahead of ourselves in assuming that these conversations involved your normal everday citizens ?”
Not with the added revelations of spying on anti-war protesters, Quakers, Vegans, and lesbians, this is all of a piece, and more consistent with a police state than a democracy. But it appears some would feel safer living on their knees than knowing the truth. Not me.
If this leads to impeachment, or Bush resignation, will the country be better off with Cheney as president?
The one time Bush actually decides to tell the truth, albeit partially, in the last five years, he admits to committing an impeachable offense. Most folks lie about the stuff they did that was illegal and tell the truth whenever they did something legal and not too embarassing. This guy flips that around. WTF?
Now we know why Team Bush in 2000 tried to distance itself from the Congressional Republicans. Sure, they attacked a Democrat, but they still attacked a President and challenged his authority. They can’t have that. Same story why Bush let the Rich pardon go through. Even party is secondary to executive loyalty for the Bushies.
Every night, George Bush goes to bed, and he is sure to thank Jesus for Osama bin Laden attacking America. That attack led to Bush being able to claim unchecked authority. Make no bones about it, these guys are thankful to bin Laden and would not roll back that day for any reason whatsoever, except to have even more power.
George Bush doesn’t just hate America, he hates humanity. And I pity George Bush and his sad followers for their sad, irrational hate.
“Are we not jumping well ahead of ourselves in assuming that these conversations involved your normal everday citizens?”
JD –
That is not the issue here. The issue is who gets to determine the status, so-called, of the people being spied on. According to FISA, if an American citizen is involved a FISC judge has to review the NSA’s case for probable cause before the NSA can go ahead with an intercept. Under the law, it’s the judge who determines whether a target is a lawful citizen or possible al-Qaeda operative. Neither the President nor an NSA agent gets to make that decision, ever. The Attorney General can make an on the spot decision probable cause and authorize a FISA wiretap on an American but then has to seek a warrant from an FISC judge within 72 hours (which is why Bush’s timeliness argument is bullshit). So it doesn’t matter who the NSA was spying on — lawabiding citizen or al-qaeada operative, if the targets were Americans, the NSA needed to go to a judge first. That’s it. Plain and simple. Bush circumvented the judge in violation of the law.
Furthermore, if it’s true that the American targets of the NSA wiretaps were all indeed citizens communicating with al-qaeda in plots to destroy the country, then it’s there’s no question that a FISC judge would have approved the surrveilance. They’ve got like a 98 percent approval rate of three decades. Thrown in the 72 hour window afforded the attorney general, during which warrantless surrveilance can take place, and there is absolutely no good reason why the Bush administration had to go around the courts in the first place. No reason whatsoever. Unless you’d like to suggest one?
Presumably if Bush ever lied under oath to cover up an extra marital affair the Right Wing would fall all over itself to convince us that since Clinton did it, Bush can too.
Frame, it’s more than 98%, there have been FIVE rejections since 1979. What we have here has been predicted for decades by observers of the far right, which is a power grab by the executive branch.
We see the “judicial activism” lie thrown around, which is nothing more than an attempt to defang the judiciary of any power. It doesn’t even have anything to do with the “liberal”-ness of the judiciary, as something like 70% of the Federal bench was nominated by Republican presidents. It has to do with concentrating power in the Presidency.
So when Russ Feingold talks about Bush wanted to be King, he is not just being glib, he is referring to the underlying strategy of the right, which is to extend presidential power.
“So when Russ Feingold talks about Bush wanted to be King, he is not just being glib, he is referring to the underlying strategy of the right, which is to extend presidential power. ”
Inherent contradiction. Bush couldn’t want to be King and also extend (his) presidential power. Extending the power of a constitutionally ordained branch of a federal republican government is hardly monarchial, now is it? These kids!
Dugger, I tell ya, my work is never done
nherent contradiction. Bush couldn t want to be King and also extend (his) presidential power.
Exactly wrong.
Extending presidential power is increasing sovereignty. It is all a matter of
degree. Just as there are cardboard Kings and Queens, there can be imperious Presidents. President Mushareff?
Dugger, occasionally lacking precision.