| Tuesday, December 27, 2005 |
| Why spy |
Defenders of the president and his secret domestic spying program keep accusing critics of trying to "tie the hands" of the commander in chief "in a time of war." Bush himself insists that the in-house spying was limited, and only used to thwart terrorism. Okay, so what anti-terror purpose was served by spying on the U.N.? Remember that story that quickly died as the run-up to the war turned into the war? The Bushies spied on members of the United Nations Security Council -- in New York, mind you, and without a word from the New York Times -- not to protect the United States, but to determine how those members would vote on a resolution authorizing the use of force against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. (Rawstory claims to have an email proving that those wiretaps were approved by none other than "dream" GOP presidential candidate Condoleezza Rice...)
So let's get our story straight. The administration has shown itself willing to spy on international friends for strictly self-serving purposes, and they've already been caught sicking military eavesdroppers on environmental and anti-war groups, but we're supposed to trust than when they turn on the surveillance equipment at home, they're strictly listening in on bomb plots, and not, say, political opponents, or, hell, the opposition candidate in a presidential election...? If the right wingers believe that, they'd have made good Germans in the 1930s...
The three little piggies
Meanwhile, three names will likely keep popping up as the NSA spy story continues to unravel: Harriet "Golly Gee" Miers, John "Parking on the Dancefloor" Ashcroft, and Alberto "Torquemada" Gonzalez, all of whom gave Mr. Bush the shoddy "legal advice" upon which he and his administration based their ill-gotten spy scheme. Can you spell "disbarrment?" Nice reminder by the Boston Globe:
By the standards of past attorneys general, Ashcroft and Gonzales were well qualified for the job. Still, neither of them had much occasion to consider the legal limits of presidential power before they took office. Ashcroft taught business law and later became attorney general of Missouri. He then spent 14 years as a governor and senator before becoming Bush's first-term AG. Gonzales was a partner at a corporate law firm before Bush became governor of Texas. He served as a legal adviser to the governor, and was briefly Texas secretary of state and a justice of the Texas Supreme Court.
By the standards of past White House counsels, both Gonzales and Miers were lightly qualified, since neither of them had Washington experience before guiding the president. By contrast, two of President Clinton's White House counsels, Lloyd Cutler and Abner Mikva, were eminent attorneys with decades of experience in assessing the limits of federal power. Ah, Harriet. You're the gift of underqualification that keeps on giving...
So we're still left with the question of why the administration chose to bypass what seems like a very friendly FISA law and tapped away without court approval. Here's an idea: Secret court modified wiretap requests
Intervention may have led Bush to bypass panel
By STEWART M. POWELL
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER WASHINGTON BUREAU
WASHINGTON -- Government records show that the administration was encountering unprecedented second-guessing by the secret federal surveillance court when President Bush decided to bypass the panel and order surveillance of U.S.-based terror suspects without the court's approval.
A review of Justice Department reports to Congress shows that the 26-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court modified more wiretap requests from the Bush administration than from the four previous presidential administrations combined.
The court's repeated intervention in Bush administration wiretap requests may explain why the president decided to bypass the court nearly four years ago to launch secret National Security Agency spying on hundreds and possibly thousands of Americans and foreigners inside the United States, according to James Bamford, an acknowledged authority on the supersecret NSA, which intercepts telephone calls, e-mails, faxes and Internet communications.
"They wanted to expand the number of people they were eavesdropping on, and they didn't think they could get the warrants they needed from the court to monitor those people," said Bamford, author of "Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency" and "The Puzzle Palace: Inside America's Most Secret Intelligence Organization." "The FISA court has shown its displeasure by tinkering with these applications by the Bush administration." Bamgord, by the way, likens the Bushies NSA spy program to the worst abuses of the Nixon administration, to whose "bad old days" he says we've returned.
Tags: politics, News, Bush, national security, NSA, government, spying |
posted by JReid @ 11:06 PM   |
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