President George W. Bush said that he had authorized the use of wiretaps on US and foreign citizens in the United States, calling the practice crucial to the “war on terror.”
The admission came in an unusual live televised broadcast of his weekly radio address, in which Bush confirmed a report that he had authorized eavesdropping on overseas communications by people living in the United States who are suspected of terrorist activities.
Bush…noted that he had personally reauthorized the program more than 30 times since September 11…
Is it time to start reminding folks of that great quote from Huey Long? “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the American flag.”
The division among conservatives between those who support a constitutional republican democracy — and those who are secure being “good Germans” — grows deeper every week. Let them fight it out amongst themselves. My personal contempt is reserved for management of the NY TIMES who prate about what news is fit to print — and spent a year kissing Bush’s butt before the stink got bad enough to force them to print the story.
This is exactly the type of antiterrorist activity we should be doing. These suspects were of sufficient concern to investigators that they requested the President’s ok. Bothering the President is not something that a career civil servant would do lightly.
Now if the number of wiretaps were in the order of 30,000 instead of 30, then I would be concerned. I think 30 wiretaps shows the proper balance between protecting citizens and respecting the rights of foreign visitors.
Least we forget, it was FOREIGN citizens that killed 3,000 of OUR citizens. Focusing our investigations upon FOREIGN citizens just might prevent another 9/11. Confiscating knitting needles from 80-year old ladies from Cleveland will not.
Getting a court order seems to provide protection for those doing the wire tapping or the operation. I don’t see how cutting the courts out of the loop creates an advantage for investigators. You would think that more legal muscle would be an advantage and not something that would hinder an investigation. The judiciary is the most stable of the three branches of our government, in my opinion. It certainly isn’t bought and sold like the other two branches. You can’t lobby a judge. I hope they haven’t started wire tapping judges.
“I think 30 wiretaps shows the proper balance between protecting citizens and respecting the rights of foreign visitors.”
Bush reauthorized the PROGRAM 30 times. There were many more wiretaps than that. And the NSA was spying on foreign AND U.S. citizens, not just foreign visitors.
Conservatives who support this bullshit have now given up the moral authority to EVER complain about “big government liberals” ever again without a big solid “go fuck yourself” from the rest of us.
As the wise man said, those who give up civil liberties in the name of security deserve neither.
Based on the limited information we have right now, I am tempted to agree that the surveillance being conducted might be reasonable, but what is totally unacceptable is that the President deciced to cicumvent the FISA and the court established by it.
The President (and Condi just now on MTP) basically say: “this is all fine and legal, trust us”.
The issue isn’t the wiretaps, ‘Smith’ – the issue is why he did not ask for the taps through the methods afforded him in the Patriot Act. The decision was to do this in an (possibly) illegal way instead of using the Patriot Act to do it. Why even have the Patriot Act if he can just skip right on by it and do whatever he wants anyway?
And, yes — what is with the NY Times sitting on this story for over a YEAR?!!!! Who got paid off on that one?
–Monty
If the government has sufficient reason to suspect someone, THEY CAN GET A WARRANT TO WIRETAP THEM. The government even has a special court designed for speed and secrecy that handles such matters. It almost never rejects government requests. It even has a provision for emergency wiretaps that lets the government do them without approval as long as they put in an application within 72 hours.
Go read Talking Points Memo today, there’s tons of good information.
The issue is not the wiretaps per se, but the trampling of the law and any checks on government power. If they had received warrants like they were supposed to this would not be an issue.
>>This is exactly the type of antiterrorist activity we should be doing.
If it’s such a good idea, why didn’t they bother getting a court order to allow them to do it? If time was of the essence, the law even allows them to start wiretapping and THEN get the court order.
This is just plain dishonest.
Just like so many things being revealed about Dumbya’s regime, this stinks to high heaven.
Smith: did you misread that on purpose? Bush re-authorized the wiretaps 30 times. It didn’t say that there were only 30 wiretaps. He said nothing about how many wiretaps were made.
Also, the issue here is not whether wiretaps are a useful law enforcement tool (they clearly are VERY useful). The issue is whether President Bush acted outside the law in authorizing them.
Actually he reauthorized the program more than 30 times, they spied on perhaps thousands of people. So either there are thousands of terrorists in the country or they spied on innocent people. Thats why they require court orders for internal spying.
No big problem? Tell it to the kid in Massachusetts who was visited by Homeland Security for ordering a book. How long before we get visits for posting ideas to a blog like this?
Please, at least get your facts straight before bloviating on a subject.
You are so right! We need to be protected from the evil-doers at any cost. My life is worth it.
Those blasted NY Times liberals have released detailed classified information such as: “The disclosure of the security agency’s warrantless eavesdropping on calls between the United States and Afghanistan sheds light on the origins of the agency’s larger surveillance activities, which officials say have included monitoring the communications of as many as 500 Americans and other people inside the United States without search warrants at any one time.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/18/politics/18spy.html?oref=login) They should be procescuted for this release.
The future state of democracy depends on these decisions by the Prez. He alone has the power to protect me.
Somebody is bootlegging milk now.
“There’s a lot of raw milk being bootlegged into New York City because it’s illegal there.” Spying on cows could be next. This sounds like Green Acres or something. Maybe they will start spying on the Amish. Maybe they already are. Round up all the farmers and watch the cows.
Here’s a very good way to put it, from Ezra Klein:
Everything Bush is doing is legal, but nothing in the way he’s doing it is. When you need a wiretap, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allows you to apply for one. When you need it yesterday, FISA allows you to place the tap immediately and retroactively clear it with a judge 72 hours later. The law strikes a balance between broad executive powers and substantive oversight—the president has full authority to assault the evildoers, but cannot deploy the law on behalf of his own political interests. It’s a check on totalitarianism. What Bush has done is unilaterally decide the oversight unnecessary. Given the shape and safeguards of FISA, there was no operational need to evade it. It was an exclusively ideological decision in service of unlimited executive powers, and it’s chilling.
Dvorak I like you. My initial impression of you (from TWiT – yes the Peter Norton “bullying” one) was evidently quite wrong!
As a non American, I have always respected and even envied your constitution. But if undermining the strong constitution like this happens and the public don’t even care then the US is in trouble. There are other huge issues as well. Secularism and privacy are being attacked by the right as well.
Smith, I’d like to add that it is not about the numbers. Whether it is 30 or 3000 it doesn’t matter. It is the principle. Once that principle has been compromised then the numbers don’t matter.
It seems to me that the only people who really have anything to worry about are terrorists. Only the guilty have anything to hide as it were?
>what is with the NY Times sitting on this story for over a YEAR?!!!! Who got paid off on that one?
Perhaps they released it now to give Democrats cover for their filibuster of the Patriot Act. More likely is because the author has a book coming out on the subject, and it helps his sales.
Congress was informed, and all sorts of lawyers went through this. It’s soubtful that this is illegal, especially since it’s not spying on Americans calling Americans.
Some folks need to look past their own echo chambers for their news.
US law provides for precisely this behavior. Try 50 USC 1802 for starters.
The only law broken here was 18 USC 793 (the Espionage Act), when some low-life leaked an ongoing anti-terrorism program to the NYT, and the NYT ran the story. But it’s not like most people care…after all, it’s just terrorists and national security, it’s not like it was Valerie Plame’s name or anything.
At this rate, I would not be surprised to read that “renditions” have occurred on US soil. “We” reserve the sovereign right to do it on foreign soil, why not on our own? 🙁
If we don’t seek Judicial review to collect information, why would we seek Judical review before we act upon that information? It eliminates the thorny issue of explaining to a Judge how we obtained the information.
Least we forget, it was FOREIGN citizens that killed 3,000 of OUR citizens
I would edit that to say: “Least we forget, it was SAUDI citizens [for the most part] that killed …”
But we don’t talk about that anymore, do we?
You mean this 1802?
…and I found that Ezra Klein quote from none other than the conservative Balloon Juice blog.
1. As far as we know, we haven’t been attacked since 9/11. (I am suspicious of a couple of train derailments)
Whatever it takes to keep idiots from flying airplanes into our buildings or other forms of destruction is ok by me. I am former card carrying member of the Libertarian Party before they adopted a policy of sending Barney Fife to arrest OBL
Idealism is wonderful if you aren’t dealing with insane people who have avowed to kill us all.
Is it time to start reminding folks of that great quote from Huey Long?
“When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the American flag.”
From what I have seen here the above statement is very true.
“Least we forget, it was FOREIGN citizens that killed 3,000 of OUR citizens. Focusing our investigations upon FOREIGN citizens just might prevent another 9/11. Confiscating knitting needles from 80-year old ladies from Cleveland will not.”
I’m not sure which crack induced hallucination caused you to believe that this sort of spying was only conducted on foreigners. Organizations such as the American Friends Service Committee were spied on also. Are right wing fascists so paranoid now that even Quakers scare you?
The best way to not have another 9/11 is to not start shit in every corner of the world, especially not the very vengeful corners such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, not to mention the majority of Central America. Countries that don’t fund terrorism in other parts of the world don’t seem to have as much of a problem keeping it out of their own lands.
There is no School of the Americas in the Netherlands. Finland didn’t fund the mudjahadeen. New Zealand never gave weapons to Saddam to settle a pointless grudge with Iran. It is not by chance that these countries don’t have the enemies the US does.
If I may slip into scifi mode for a minute, it seems all but certain that in the next century or two (or ten) even a 5 year old child will eventually have the technology to destroy all life on earth. Long before that point we can either find a way to ban free will, or a way to grown the hell up, and evolve beyond this domestic/foreign, them/us, right/left crapola. The only other alternative is extinction.
I applaud Bush for this move- and I do so not because I approve, but because his actions, and his admission of the existence of this program, were exactly what was needed to bring about the defeat of the Patriot Act provisions the other day. That defeat was based on the revelations in a single newspaper article; now with this official acknowledgment by Bush that he broke the law and conntinued to do so for years, it is very unlikely that he will gain enough support in congress to renew his precious Patriot Act. So in this case- thank you Mr. President!
AB CD
“since it’s not spying on Americans calling Americans.”
And how do you know that?
“It’s soubtful that this is illegal,”
It’s doubtful that it’s illegal for a government agency to do what it shouldn’t?
Okay, here’s another interesting tidbit coming out: at the time Chairmain of the Senate Intelligence Committee Bob Graham says he was never told of the program.
>There is no School of the Americas in the Netherlands. Finland didn’t fund the mudjahadeen. New Zealand never gave weapons to Saddam to settle a pointless grudge with Iran. It is not by chance that these countries don’t have the enemies the US does.
I don’t know about Finland, but New Zealand has had terrorist attacks, and the Dutch have their own Muslim terrorism problem. Have you heard of Theo Van Gogh and Pim Fortuyn?
>“since it’s not spying on Americans calling Americans.”
>And how do you know that?
That’s what the article said-people calling overseas.
It’s probably not illegal given the number oif people who were informed about it.
Ignorance and absurdity. Is this supposed to have “shock” value?
#19 Greg,
Excellent find! Throws good light on the subject.
I would also point out this part of 1802:
“1802 (B) there is no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party; …”
Any bets on whether or not US persons have been wiretapped without a warrant?