Bush Secretly Lifted Some Limits on Spying in U.S. After9/11

[whimsicaldeb]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/15/polit ... ogram.html
-or- here:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=5189

December 16th, 2005 12:24 pm
Bush Secretly Lifted Some Limits on Spying in U.S. After 9/11, Officials Say
By James Risen and Eric Lichtblau / New York Times

WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 ­- Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

(cutting)

A White House Briefing

After the special program started, Congressional leaders from both political parties were brought to Vice President Dick Cheney's office in the White House. The leaders, who included the chairmen and ranking members of the Senate and House intelligence committees, learned of the N.S.A. operation from Mr. Cheney, Gen. Michael V. Hayden of the Air Force, who was then the agency's director and is now the principal deputy director of national intelligence, and George J. Tenet, then the director of the C.I.A., officials said.

It is not clear how much the members of Congress were told about the presidential order and the eavesdropping program. Some of them declined to comment about the matter, while others did not return phone calls.

Later briefings were held for members of Congress as they assumed leadership roles on the intelligence committees, officials familiar with the program said. After a 2003 briefing, Senator Rockefeller, the West Virginia Democrat who became vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee that year, wrote a letter to Mr. Cheney expressing concerns about the program, officials knowledgeable about the letter said. It could not be determined if he received a reply. Mr. Rockefeller declined to comment. Aside from the Congressional leaders, only a small group of people, including several cabinet members and officials at the N.S.A., the C.I.A. and the Justice Department, know of the program.

Some officials familiar with it say they consider warrantless eavesdropping inside the United States to be unlawful and possibly unconstitutional, amounting to an improper search. One government official involved in the operation said he privately complained to a Congressional official about his doubts about the legality of the program. But nothing came of his inquiry. "People just looked the other way because they didn't want to know what was going on," he said.

--end excerpt

....


I’m wondering -- with this information finally coming out into the open (to light), don’t we now have enough evidence to impeach Bush? Isn’t this Watergate all over again? It seems to me things have finally caught up with him (bush).

[whimsicaldeb]

http://www.workingforchange.com/blog/

Sirotablog
12.17.05

How the media "authorizes" the abuse of government power

The story of President Bush deliberately breaking the law to create a domestic spy operation is a lot of different things: it is a tale of power abuse, arrogance, and contempt for the law. But it is also a story of how today's major media behaves with near total deference to power and its own profit motive.

---end excerpt

Link referenced in blog above:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01716.html

At the Times, a Scoop Deferred
By Paul Farhi
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 17, 2005; Page A07

The New York Times' revelation yesterday that President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to conduct domestic eavesdropping raised eyebrows in political and media circles, for both its stunning disclosures and the circumstances of its publication.

In an unusual note, the Times said in its story that it held off publishing the 3,600-word article for a year after the newspaper's representatives met with White House officials. It said the White House had asked the paper not to publish the story at all, "arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny."

--end excerpt

[whimsicaldeb]

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... G9V7Q1.DTL

Bush: no regrets over domestic spying
He reauthorized secret program 'more than 30 times'
David E. Sanger, New York Times
Sunday, December 18, 2005

excerpt:

In his statement Saturday, Bush did not address the main question directed at him by some members of Congress on Friday: why he felt it necessary to circumvent the system established under law, which allows the administration to seek emergency warrants, in secret, from the court that oversees intelligence operations. His critics said that under that law, the administration could have obtained the same information.

--end excerpt


FFI: Source: The Charters of Freedom: Bill of Rights:

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

http://www.archives.gov/national-archiv ... cript.html

----


... Your ballroom days are over baby, night is drawing near.
Shadows of the evening, crawl across the years. ...
~ Jim Morrison; The Doors; "Five to One"; from the album "Waiting for the sun"; 1968

[Zlatko Waterman]

The only chance, really, is to get the mass of citizens upset over this trashing of the Constitution.

Unfortunately, long experience has taught me that this is very difficult.

If their sons and daughters were dying continually, and continually drafted, as in Vietnam, the masses would awaken.

Otherwise-- it's just more conspicuous consumption.

Thanks for these articles, Deb.


DEB :( added later) You may wish to look at the Harold Bloom essay I added to the HAROLD PINTER NOBEL LECTURE thread . . .


--Z

[whimsicaldeb]

December 17th, 2005 7:25 pm
On Hill, Anger and Calls for Hearings Greet News of Stateside Surveillance
By Dan Eggen and Charles Lane / Washington Post

Congressional leaders of both parties called for hearings and issued condemnations yesterday in the wake of reports that President Bush signed a secret order in 2002 allowing the National Security Agency to spy on hundreds of U.S. citizens and other residents without court-approved warrants.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... ailarticle


....

Hi Z, we'll see where this leads ~ eh?

[firsty]

why the nsa wiretaps are illegal:

http://swireblog.blogspot.com/2005/12/w ... legal.html

Monday, December 19, 2005

Why the NSA Wiretapping Is Illegal

This post tries to lay out, in straightforward terms, the reason why the NSA surveillance program violates U.S. criminal law. (It is possible that classified details of the program would change the analysis, but I don’t see how.) The discussion here draws on my law review article “The System of Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Law,” www.ssrn.com/abstracts=586616, which provides the history of this area of law.

It takes two statutes to see the point.

The first statute is 50 U.S.C. Sec. 1809: “A person is guilty of an offense if he intentionally –

(1) engages in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute; or

(2) discloses or uses information obtained under color of law by electronic surveillance, knowing or having reason to know that the information was obtained through electronic surveillance not authorized by statute.”

Two things to note here. “Under color of law” refers to government employees who are doing their job, such as NSA employees doing wiretaps under a Presidential order. Second, it is permitted to wiretap if and only if “authorized by statute.”

So what statutory authorization is there? Congress made clear back in 1978 that there are two, and only two, statutes that authorize wiretaps within the United States. One is “Title III,” which gives the rules for wiretaps for law enforcement. The other is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which gives the rules for wiretaps for foreign intelligence purposes.

Since 1978, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2511(2)(f) has said that Title III and FISA “shall be the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance ... and the interception of domestic wire and oral communications may be conducted.”

So that is why the NSA wiretaps appear illegal. Government officials can only wiretap “as authorized by statute” and the only statutes that count are Title III and FISA. The NSA wiretaps did not use the judicial procedures of either Title III or FISA.

What might be the defense in the legal memoranda by the Bush Justice Department? Hints in the press suggest two, both weak.

First, there is the suggestion that the authorization of force after 9/11 permitted the President to order domestic wiretaps. As a matter of reading statutes, this is a weak argument. On the one hand, we have a very specific statement by Congress in Sec. 2511(2)(f) that Title III and FISA are “the exclusive means.” On the other hand, the Administration seems to say that the general Congressional resolution amended that statute, without anyone realizing it. That approach is contrary to the usual reading of statutes, where there is no “repeal by implication” – you have to say you are repealing a specific statute for the repeal to be effective.

Second, the President seems to have invoked his general commander-in-chief power. In essence, the claim is that the President can repeal Sec. 2511(2)(f) simply by saying so in an Executive Order. That sort of claim of inherent presidential power was at the core of the debate about the so-called “torture memo.” Once the Congress and the press saw the memo, it was retracted and rewritten.

[stilltrucking]

You

"nattering nabobs of negativity".

make sick
9/11
Don't you understand
9/11
Our dear leader had to take action
9/11
No time to wait for the niceties of constituitional goverment
9/11
if we have learned anything from
9/11
Osama said he would bring our liberties crashing down.

With a little help from his friends in this administration.

Nothing new here firsty, just the technology is more efficient.
Our dear president wilson so eager to make the world safe for democracy, the first thing to go was freedom of speach here. The Palmer raids, the ailien and sedition acts,

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USApalmerR.htm

[whimsicaldeb]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10536559/site/newsweek/
December 20th, 2005 1:24 pm
Bush’s Snoopgate

The president was so desperate to kill The New York Times’ eavesdropping story, he summoned the paper’s editor and publisher to the Oval Office. But it wasn’t just out of concern about national security.

By Jonathan Alter / Newsweek

excerpt:

What is especially perplexing about this story is that the 1978 law set up a special court to approve eavesdropping in hours, even minutes, if necessary. In fact, the law allows the government to eavesdrop on its own, then retroactively justify it to the court, essentially obtaining a warrant after the fact. Since 1979, the FISA court has approved tens of thousands of eavesdropping requests and rejected only four. There was no indication the existing system was slow—as the president seemed to claim in his press conference—or in any way required extra-constitutional action.

This will all play out eventually in congressional committees and in the United States Supreme Court. If the Democrats regain control of Congress, there may even be articles of impeachment introduced. Similar abuse of power was part of the impeachment charge brought against Richard Nixon in 1974.

--end excerpt

[whimsicaldeb]

December 23rd, 2005 10:56 pm
Power We Didn't Grant
By Tom Daschle / Washington Post

In the face of mounting questions about news stories saying that President Bush approved a program to wiretap American citizens without getting warrants, the White House argues that Congress granted it authority for such surveillance in the 2001 legislation authorizing the use of force against al Qaeda. On Tuesday, Vice President Cheney said the president "was granted authority by the Congress to use all means necessary to take on the terrorists, and that's what we've done."

As Senate majority leader at the time, I helped negotiate that law with the White House counsel's office over two harried days. I can state categorically that the subject of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens never came up. I did not and never would have supported giving authority to the president for such wiretaps. I am also confident that the 98 senators who voted in favor of authorization of force against al Qaeda did not believe that they were also voting for warrantless domestic surveillance.

On the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, the White House proposed that Congress authorize the use of military force to "deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States." Believing the scope of this language was too broad and ill defined, Congress chose instead, on Sept. 14, to authorize "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed or aided" the attacks of Sept. 11. With this language, Congress denied the president the more expansive authority he sought and insisted that his authority be used specifically against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

Just before the Senate acted on this compromise resolution, the White House sought one last change. Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words "in the United States and" after "appropriate force" in the agreed-upon text. This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas -- where we all understood he wanted authority to act -- but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens. I could see no justification for Congress to accede to this extraordinary request for additional authority. I refused.

The shock and rage we all felt in the hours after the attack were still fresh. America was reeling from the first attack on our soil since Pearl Harbor. We suspected thousands had been killed, and many who worked in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were not yet accounted for. Even so, a strong bipartisan majority could not agree to the administration's request for an unprecedented grant of authority.

The Bush administration now argues those powers were inherently contained in the resolution adopted by Congress -- but at the time, the administration clearly felt they weren't or it wouldn't have tried to insert the additional language.

All Americans agree that keeping our nation safe from terrorists demands aggressive and innovative tactics. This unity was reflected in the near-unanimous support for the original resolution and the Patriot Act in those harrowing days after Sept. 11. But there are right and wrong ways to defeat terrorists, and that is a distinction this administration has never seemed to accept. Instead of employing tactics that preserve Americans' freedoms and inspire the faith and confidence of the American people, the White House seems to have chosen methods that can only breed fear and suspicion.

If the stories in the media over the past week are accurate, the president has exercised authority that I do not believe is granted to him in the Constitution, and that I know is not granted to him in the law that I helped negotiate with his counsel and that Congress approved in the days after Sept. 11. For that reason, the president should explain the specific legal justification for his authorization of these actions, Congress should fully investigate these actions and the president's justification for them, and the administration should cooperate fully with that investigation.

In the meantime, if the president believes the current legal architecture of our country is insufficient for the fight against terrorism, he should propose changes to our laws in the light of day.

That is how a great democracy operates. And that is how this great democracy will defeat terrorism.

The writer, a former Democratic senator from South Dakota, was Senate majority leader in 2001-02. He is now distinguished senior fellow at the Center for American Progress.

source:
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/index.php?id=5275

orginal source:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... ailarticle

[whimsicaldeb]

December 24, 2005
Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN

WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 - The National Security Agency has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity, according to current and former government officials.

The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system's main arteries, they said.

--end excerpt
source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/polit ... nted=print


.....


December 24, 2005
Alito Memo in '84 Favored Immunity for Top Officials
By ADAM LIPTAK and DAVID E. ROSENBAUM

The attorney general should be immune from lawsuits for ordering wiretaps of Americans without permission from a court, Samuel A. Alito Jr., President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, wrote in a memorandum in 1984 as a government lawyer in the Reagan administration.

The memorandum, released yesterday by the National Archives, made recommendations concerning a lawsuit against former Attorney General John N. Mitchell over a wiretap he had authorized without a court's permission in 1970. The government was investigating a plot to destroy underground utility tunnels in Washington and to kidnap Henry A. Kissinger, the national security adviser.

---end excerpt
Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/polit ... nted=print

[whimsicaldeb]

Why Bush decided to bypass court in ordering wiretaps
Panel of judges modified his requests
Stewart M. Powell, Hearst Newspapers
Sunday, December 25, 2005
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... GD95C1.DTL

excerpt:

To win a court-approved wiretap, the government must show "probable cause" that the target of the surveillance is a member of a foreign terrorist organization or foreign power and is engaged in activities that "may" involve a violation of criminal law.

No 'probable cause'

Faced with that standard, Bamford said the Bush administration had difficulty obtaining FISA court-approved wiretaps on dozens of people within the United States who were communicating with targeted al Qaeda suspects inside the United States.

"The court wouldn't find enough 'probable cause' to give the Bush administration wiretap warrants on everybody that talks to or e-mails the terror suspect that they were trying to target," Bamford said.

(cutting)

"NSA prides itself on learning the lessons of the 1970s and obeying the legal restrictions imposed by FISA," Bamford said. "Now it looks like we're going back to the bad old days again."

--end excerpt