Not after 9/11...
When The New York Times first reported on Bush administration efforts to spy on Americans without warrants, the White House generally responded in two ways. One, blaming the press for disclosing the programs. And two, claiming that the programs were necessary to protect the country so that another 9/11 doesn't happen. But a report this weekend by Bloomberg's Andrew Harris thoroughly undercuts the President's spin.
The U.S. National Security Agency asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers claimed June 23 in court papers filed in New York federal court.
The allegation is part of a court filing adding AT&T, the nation's largest telephone company, as a defendant in a breach of privacy case filed earlier this month on behalf of Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. customers. The suit alleges that the three carriers, the NSA and President George W. Bush violated the Telecommunications Act of 1934 and the U.S. Constitution, and seeks money damages.
``The Bush Administration asserted this became necessary after 9/11,'' plaintiff's lawyer Carl Mayer said in a telephone interview. ``This undermines that assertion.'' [emphasis added]
At this stage, it is important to note that there are only allegations that the Bush administration began spying on Americans before 9/11. But should these allegations pan out -- or even if the White House is in some way able to convince the courts to throw out this lawsuit -- it's not clear to me that the President will ever be able to win back the trust and faith of the American people. The recent revelations out of California -- that the state's Office of Homeland Security was spying on political dissenters -- only underscore this. Read the Bloomberg report here.
What say you now, righties? If this is true, then what is the justification?
BTW, having cooked up the notion of an Axis of Evil in December of 2001, for one reason and one reason only: to convince the American people that a response to the 9/11 attacks by Afghanistan-based terrorists who themselves were from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Yemen, the admnistration probably wanted to get its databases in a row ... the better to profile, and market the war to, the American people.
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Tags: AT&T, Domestic spying, NSA, Bush, Politics, War on Terror, Congress, FISA, wiretapping, surveillance, spying, Privacy, eavesdropping |
