http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Democratic_s...d_law_1217.html

Democratic senator says Bush violated law with wiretaps: He is a president, not a king
RAW STORY

From a release issued to RAW STORY by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) in response to President Bush's admission Saturday that the president personally authorized wiretaps of individuals who emailed or phoned other countries.

“Yesterday morning, Republican and Democratic Senators blocked a flawed bill that extended parts of the Patriot Act that are set to expire without fixing the fundamental problems with the law. Nobody wants these parts of the Patriot Act to expire -- we want to fix them before making them permanent, by including important protections for the rights and freedoms of innocent American citizens.

“With a few modest but critical improvements, like making sure that when the government seeks library records it has to show that those records have some connection to a suspected terrorist or spy, we can give the government the powers it needs while also protecting the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens. The President can sign a bill into law tomorrow to reauthorize the Patriot Act if he will agree to the bill that the Senate unanimously passed in July or he could extend the law for a short period so negotiations can continue.

“The President's shocking admission that he authorized the National Security Agency to spy on American citizens, without going to a court and in violation of the Constitution and laws passed by Congress, further demonstrates the urgent need for these protections. The President believes that he has the power to override the laws that Congress has passed. This is not how our democratic system of government works. The President does not get to pick and choose which laws he wants to follow. He is a president, not a king.

“On behalf of all Americans who believe in our constitutional system of government, I call on this Administration to stop this program immediately and to fully cooperate with congressional inquiries and investigations. We have had enough of an Administration that puts itself above the law and the Constitution.”

Fact Sheet on Domestic Intelligence Wiretaps December 17, 2005

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was enacted in 1978 to provide a statutory framework for eavesdropping on individuals within the United States, including U.S. citizens, who are not suspected of having committed a crime but who are likely to be spies or members of terrorist organizations.

FISA established a secret court that could issue wiretap orders if the government showed probable cause that the individual to be tapped is an “agent of a foreign power,” meaning he or she is affiliated with a foreign government or terrorist organization. This is an easier standard to meet than the criminal wiretap standard, which requires that there be: (1) probable cause that the individual to be tapped has committed, is committing, or is about to commit a crime, and (2) probable cause that communications concerning that crime will be obtained through the electronic surveillance.

In the 27 years since it was established, the FISA court has turned down only a handful of applications for wiretap orders. The number of approved FISA wiretap orders has jumped since September 11, 2001, with 1,754 FISA orders issued last year, up from 934 such orders in 2001.

FISA already addresses emergency situations where there is not time to get pre-approval from the court. It includes an emergency exception that permits government agents to install a wiretap and start monitoring phone and email conversations immediately, as long as they then go to the FISA court and get a court order within 72 hours.

FISA makes it a crime, punishable by up to five years in prison, to conduct electronic surveillance except as provided for by statute. The only defense is for law government agents engaged in official duties conducting “surveillance authorized by and conducted pursuant to a search warrant or court order.” [50 U.S.C. § 1809]

Congress has specifically stated, in statute, that the criminal wiretap statute and FISA “shall be the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance . . . and the interception of domestic wire, oral, and electronic communications may be conducted.” [18 U.S.C. § 2518(f)]

The target of a FISA wiretap is never given notice that he or she was subject to surveillance, unless the evidence obtained through the electronic surveillance is ultimately used against the target in a criminal trial.


Copyright © 2004-05 Raw Story Media, Inc. All rights reserved. | Site map |Privacy policy

I want to amend my previous statement that I wasn't sure if the illegal eavesdropping sanctioned by Bush was an impeachable offense: If President Clinton could be impeached for his sexual indiscretions with a consenting adult, then the current president--George W. Bush--can be impeached for an anti-Constitutional offense. He is acting as if he's the first dictator of the United States rather than the legitimate law-abiding president of the United States; he seems to think he's above the law and should be proved wrong.

I just hope that the Republican-dominated Congress would do their Constitutional duty and start the proceedings rather than blindly adhering to party loyalty.


Sincerely,

Jesseaw

First off, we are not at war. It's high time that we all stopped buying into mindset that we are. It is that mindset that excuses Bush's constant abuse of power.

Secondly, what you are saying is true in any dictatorship or totalitarian government too. If people aren't doing something that government deems "wrong", then they have nothing to fear when the government checks up on them. Fortunately, our constitution protects the innocent as well as the guilty.

Finally, it was NOT necessary. Existing law allowed wiretapping in emergency situations without the need to obtain a warrent. All the government had to do was obtain the necessary warrent from a secret court within 72 hours of beginning the tap. 72 hours. That's three days! If they had an emergency and if immediate action was needed, they had the right to take action to protect America. ALL they had to do was go to a secret court THREE days after the fact.

This CANNOT be allowed to stand! Bush and his gang of thugs are already out screaming that the media has endangered national security. But there is not one reason on earth that they need unlimited power .......... and that is what they want. Unlimited power to poke into whatever and whoever they want without any oversight or even having to inform the person after the fact.

Think about that. Our government could check out each of us, read our mail, check our internet communications AND NEVER HAVE TO TELL US OR ANYONE ELSE ABOUT IT!!!!!

If we follow the same destructive principles that allowed President Clinton to be impeached then sure Bush could be impeached. However, we have to ask ourselves, is this really the road we want to travel. How can we hail this as the right thing to do when all of us know that the Clinton impeachment was wrong?
Mabye we should find a way to repeal the Clinton impeachment based on what we know was happening back then instead of going forward with another one. That would seem much more productive to me.

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/


Make the List Public: Who Did the White House Spy On?
I don't care how long the list is of those people and phone numbers that have been surreptitiously monitored by the National Security Agency without court approval.

This list should be made public -- published in full on the Internet.

If there are specific individuals or numbers that a judge wishes to give ex post facto protection, I can accept that.

But this invasion of privacy in the case of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of American citizens must be challenged in the courts. What Bush did is engage in an extra-legal act against the citizens he is paid to represent -- and this is criminal.

Post the list. It should be made public because at this point there is NO NATIONAL SECURITY rationale to justify the monitoring of citizens in cases that have not been approved by a court. That means that all of those citizens monitored are innocent -- and unwitting victims of this domestic spy campaign launched by George W. Bush.

Publish the list of phone numbers, Mr. President. Do it now or lawyers may start working today to compel you through the courts to do it.

TWN would be happy to provide the bandwidth and home exposing this national intelligence disgrace.

-- Steve Clemons

05:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (58)
Timing of National Security Agency Spying on Americans Disclosure Helps Kill Patriot Act Extension
Although the New York Times cut a deal with the Bush administration a year ago to keep hidden the fact that it knew that the National Security Agency was spying on the electronic voice and data transmissions of American citizens -- without court approval -- the news of this which hit today resulted in the Senate saying enough is enough.

The Senate voted to kill extension of 16 Patriot Act provisions expiring on December 31st.

From an AP report:

President Bush, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Republicans congressional leaders had lobbied fiercely to make most of the expiring Patriot Act provisions permanent.
They also supported new safeguards and expiration dates to the act's two most controversial parts: authorization for roving wiretaps, which allow investigators to monitor multiple devices to keep a target from evading detection by switching phones or computers; and secret warrants for books, records and other items from businesses, hospitals and organizations such as libraries.


There is momentum now behind those who want to clip the wings of the Bush White House. A genuine battle is breaking out. . .finally.

In the past, those who would preserve our system of checks and balances, our system of justice, and civil society have been too weak compared to a White House that had become intoxicated with a passionate belief in its own infallibility.

The White House is being handed one defeat after another, but the President and his team despise being beaten. I suspect that we are entering a dangerous period where the White House feels trapped and prone to excess to try and get back in control.

Stay tuned.

-- Steve Clemons

We are at war in Iraq.

.

I make this statement only in respect to the fact that wars end,and afterwards, we return to a normal state. Maybe that is why it wasn't put into a law, laws are very difficult to strike from the books.

.

Sure, we can see that it may not have been necessary now. This is a chance many were not willing to take right after 9/11. This is a obvious and legitimate argument.




I think about this the same way I think about a jury. A jury is picked from the general population and represent many different people. There are many different people working in our security agencies. A jury watches a situation and judges for themselves if someone is guilty or innocent with full knowledge of what is going on. They come to a verdict without a court warrant, they are fully dependent on what is presented to them, very rarely does a judge alter a verdict. Those that work in our security agencies are everyday American's like us. They are able to put themselves in our position and understand that if they abuse their power, that they are setting a precedence that could later allow someone to abuse them and their way of life as well. It's not like we have foreigners in this country spying on us, that's what happened before we were attacked, remember? These are other American's that know the position we are in. Is this foolproof? No, jury's aren't either. But its the best way we have right now until someone else comes up with something better.

"We are at war in Iraq."


oh, I didn't know that. When Did War Get Declared?
Was I out of town?

http://www.ericblumrich.com/14.html

Whatever man, you know what I am talking about. We know that the "Victory" was a joke. The fight with the insurgents will more than likely be looked upon in the future as a separate war. I just assumed it a little early, that's all.

Perhaps I was a bit hasty in my judgment to impeach, but this Congress should immediately start an investigation as to whether this was an impeachable offense and clearly anti-Constitutional or not. If his actions were proved wrong, Bush should at least be censured and corrected in his assumptions as to what is within and without the law of the land. We have a system of checks and balances that should be adhered to; no one--not even the president of the United States--is above the law.

BTW, I like your idea of exploring how--and if--the Clinton impeachment can be repealed.

Sincerely,

Jesseaw

Either we are a nation of idiots or he is a freaking moron!
what the hell is he thinking!


Bush defends eavesdropping

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051218/pl_nm/...HNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush defended a secret order he signed allowing for eavesdropping on people in the United States, as he fought on Saturday for the renewal of the anti-terror USA Patriot Act.

On Capitol Hill, where a hearing has been promised on Bush's order, lawmakers in both parties said they wanted to avoid allowing the Patriot Act to expire. One possibility was a temporary extension until differences could be resolved in efforts to balance national security with civil liberties.

Bush said he made the secret order to allow eavesdropping of people in the United States after the September 11, 2001, attacks, and criticized leaks to the news media about it.

"I authorized the National Security Agency, consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations," Bush said a rare live radio address.

"This is a highly classified program that is crucial to our national security," Bush said.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, later responded by saying: "The president's statement today raises serious questions as to what the activities were and whether the activities were lawful."

Bush initially refused to confirm a report on Friday in The New York Times about the NSA program, saying he would not discuss sensitive intelligence matters.

On Saturday, the president said he had reauthorized the eavesdropping program 30 times since the September 11, 2001, and intends to continue it "for as long as our nation faces a continuing threat from al Qaeda and related groups."

Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record), a Democrat, voiced concern about the program and backed plans by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, for a congressional hearing.

"Electronic surveillance is an important law enforcement and intelligence gathering tool, but it can and must be done lawfully, in accordance with our laws and Constitution," he said.

Bush's radio address came amid an impasse in Congress over a measure that would extend key provisions of the 2001 Patriot Act that are set to expire on December 31. The act expanded the power of law enforcement to track suspected terrorists.

VIEW FROM CAPITOL HILL

A group of senators -- most of them Democrats joined by a few Republicans -- on Friday blocked renewal of the provisions as they demanded more safeguards for civil liberties. Bush said the roadblock was irresponsible and could endanger lives.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican, said, "We're working all angles" to extend expiring provisions, and voiced optimism that they would succeed.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, again urged a three-month extension of the provisions to allow time to resolve the differences. Congressional Republican leaders and the White House have so far rejected such a move.

But one congressional leadership aide put it, "No one one wants to see this expire," so a temporary extension was a looming possibility.

The New York Times said the presidential order allowed the National Security Agency to track international telephone calls and e-mails of hundreds of people without the court approval normally required for domestic spying.

Bush said the disclosure was improper. "Revealing classified information is illegal, alerts our enemies, and endangers our country," he said.

He insisted his role as commander-in-chief gave him the authority to allow the surveillance. He said the program was constitutional, was reviewed by legal authorities and that leaders in Congress were aware of it.

Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold (news, bio, voting record) of Wisconsin said he was shocked by the program and disagreed with Bush on its legality.

"The president believes that he has the power to override the laws that Congress has passed. This is not how our democratic system of government works," Feingold said. "He is a president, not a king.


................
yah no kidding!
we know he't not a king
but according to his momy he is The King
and according to all those freaking rabic chick hawls republicans he is their king!
lets see how Faux news and all the morons on the right spin this one!
god what is going threw the Bubble Boys little head!
is he really this freaking stupid!

Shrub is a fascist. He is a little man with big friends and he is prancing around shouting out that he is protecting us from those bad ol' terrorists while he is sticking his nose up our privates. We have a problem here in America... it's apathy, it's media opiates, its the dumbing and the outsourcing of American brain and brawn. It is a sick little man with pathological henchmen breaking the legs of anyone that stands up to their thuggery. It is the Brown shirts and the Black shirts resurrected.

- Merry Christmas

??? Don't know what this means? Please explain.

Sorry Didn't mean to jump in ... I am just so livid about BushCo and his antics...
Please wake me up from this nightmare!

here are links to what I was referring to regarding blk and brn shirts...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Shirts

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturmabteilung

Nooooo I don't think so. I seem to remember Bush declaring victory and the Iraqi army being defeated. What we are doing now is rebuilding Iraq.



THAT is the problem with buying into the mindset that we are engaged in a war without a declared enemy and declared end point. It never ends and things never do return to normal. Just ask Bush; he's willing to say it ........... things will never be "normal" again because this is a "new" era.

That's why we can't keep accepting his logic and spin. If we do, then we are doomed to a never ending state of war in which the enemy and end point constantly changes to keep us perputually at war.



It was not necessary THEN! If his lawyers weren't aware of the laws on the books at the time of 9/11, then they are more incompentant than any first year law student in this country or any other country. But the reality is that they WERE aware, but they wanted to push the argument that the President had unlimited authority in times of war ......... ohhhh there's that word again. They wanted the position that if we're at war, Bush gets to do what he wants. Even if laws exist to let him do it legally and even if he was faced with a Congress that was giving him everything he asked for. He wanted more.

AND he STILL wants more. That is what enrages me tonight. If this was a short-term action, then your arguments might make sense. But this is not what Bush and his Repubican cohorts are saying. He's not defending action that was short-lived and only taken in the heat of the moment. THEY WANT TO KEEP THE POWER THAT THEY GRABBED IN THE AFTERMATH OF A NATIONAL CRISIS. It's not just that they were afraid that Congress might not allow them what they saw as necessary power, it's that even at his height of power BUSH NEVER TRIED TO MAKE THIS ACTION LEGAL!!! He simply took power and now he's fighting to keep it.

And by the way, that is the nature of power. People who have it, do not willingly give it up. It wouldn't matter if it was Ted Kennedy or John Kerry (as examples of vocal liberals), NO ONE gives up power once they have it.

That is okay, it's an easy topic to get livid about!! Thanks for the info.

The fourth amendment of The 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."

This is part of the US Constitution that Bush has sworn twice a solemn oath to defend. He has betrayed the trust of Americans and arrogantly claimed some bogus entitlement to continue violating these fundamental human rights to "fight fhe war on terror.

He needs to resign or be impeached, How serious does it have to get to be a "high crime or misdemeanor?"

Well said!

I know he declared victory, however, I never believed it, did you? I feel strongly history will judge this conflict with the insurgents as another war, I just assume it now rather than later. Similarly we are beginning to look at WWI and WWII as the same conflict, in the future, it will more than likely be viewed as one in the same.



I didn't know untill recently that the Patriot Act was simply an expansion of laws that had been enacted in 1996 by the Clinton administration. I agree with you that his lawyers should have been more aware and considerate of this fact.

.

Yes, they are trying desparately to hang on to the power that was grabbed right after 9/11. I am not sure I want the actions he has taken put into law, its too hard to strike them from the books once this is done.

I think that jeeseaw had a good idea to censure any illegal actions he is still trying to take if they are unwarranted by security needs. This may be a necessary step if we do not begin to progress forward. Power corrupts, once you have it, you think you deserved it all along. Nothing a little humility couldn't cure. I wish these guys could get that at least!!

Are George Bush Stupid?


Or an aristocratic victim of the noble inbreeding run a muck.

no he isn't stupid, its us, the american people who are stupid.
a war that has claimed god know howmany lives.
oure president acting like a bafoon
jobs leaving the country.
and what are people worried about!

Wal-Mart Confronted on 'Happy Holidays'
AP - 7 minutes ago
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - A group of religious protesters demonstrated outside a Wal-Mart superstore Saturday, hoping to turn away customers by calling attention to the retailer's decision to use "happy holidays" rather than "merry Christmas" in its seasonal advertising

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051218/ap_on_...HNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

shah269, you might want to have them merge this one with the other post

distraction, diversion, substitution, lies and deceit... whatever keeps us busy and off target... that's the BushCo game plan.

That IS the point. If we keep accepting the mindset, then we will always be at war. Bush declared victory and the Iraqi government and army fell. If that's not an end to "war", then what will be??? There will always be "insurgents" and those who act to create what they want or to restore what they want. So by that logic, this "war" never ends and Bush never has to surrender his unlimited power.

And Bush is using the insurgents there to expand the power here. Our government declared a small group of quakers in Florida as "threats" because they oppose the war. Are we at war with them too? Are quakers our new home-grown insurgency? Before you scoff and lecture me for taking things to extremes that aren't realistic remember this ................. the Pentagon spied on them AND decided as a result they were threats. This is not a group that advocated violence or had ties to Al Queda. But they were watched, spied upon, communications were monitored and ultimately they were judged "threats".

You think it can't happen to you?

Look we can blame The Comander in Chimp but honestly I blame our fellow citizens for being so dam stupid! Remember stupidity is not an excuse. Like sheep! I bet half of all republicans would love to burn the bill of rights and the constitution all except for their damed second ammendment!
thake their freadom of speach away
take away their jobs
take away their food
take away their health care
but don't you be a dam commy bastard don't take away their second freaking amendment!
like i said
republicans go for the three G's
God
Guns
and
Gays.
they really don't caer about any thing else!
and they constitute 51% of our god dam population!

The issue is not about war or terror. The issue is wether the president is above the law as enacted by Congress. We are a nation of laws as often expressed by Bush. Then he proceeds to brake them. That is not tolorable to lots of people including me.

49% counted as 51% makes a big difference.
The Germans aren't stupid and look at the fine piece of fearless leader crapsmanship that ran it into the ground and almost destroyed civilization? It takes two to tango... the abuser and the enabler... so here we are, again. Now, what are we going to do about it? Burn in the ovens or kick his a$$ out of office and into jail where he and his buddies belong?

Well, I think the problem came in with the ending of the war because of what happened in the the first Iraq war. We left too soon, and many innocent people were killed by the government we thought we had defeated. My impression is that they are trying to avoid this during this war, this time it has taken the form of an insurgency. Maybe that's the whole strategy in this particular conflict, they let us think that we win and then they attack in this fashion instead as they seem to be more capable of waging more destruction this way.




I am not lecturing you, I thought I was having a discussion with you. Quakers as threats seem pretty ridiculus. Catholics are often treated in the same way because of their views on war and involvement in the Pro-Life movement. I am sure this can happen to anybody, and I know for a fact that the Pentagon is very aggressive when it comes to those it views as threats. My father was in a military intelligence unit , he probably knows more about our government than the people running it do right now. The truth of the matter is we were even more aggressive when he was in the military during the cold war, and it can and does get much worse than where we are right now. Not that accusing a bunch of Quakers isn't wrong, I would like to more about what happened in that situation. Do you happen to have any more information, or can you direct me to an article about it?

[
Unfortunately, J.Q. Republican and a lot of others as well, will turn a blind eye until it is too late. Just as the Germans did. All Bushie has to do is thump on the bible as he screems "Remember 9/11." He learned how to control the masses from the experts.

Bush broke the law

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_12_11_atri...486383788554537

Bob Barr on illegal spying:


BOB BARR, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: What's wrong with it is several-fold. One, it's bad policy for our government to be spying on American citizens through the National Security Agency. Secondly, it's bad to be spying on Americans without court oversight. And thirdly, it's bad to be spying on Americans apparently in violation of federal laws against doing it without court order.

...

BARR: Well, the fact of the matter is that the Constitution is the Constitution, and I took an oath to abide by it. My good friend, my former colleague, Dana Rohrabacher, did and the president did. And I don't really care very much whether or not it can be justified based on some hypothetical. The fact of the matter is that, if you have any government official who deliberately orders that federal law be violated despite the best of motives, that certainly ought to be of concern to us.


...

ROHRABACHER: And by the way, how do we know who wasn't deterred from blowing up other targets. The fact is --

BARR: Well, gee, I guess then the president should be able to ignore whatever provision in the Constitution as long as there's something after the fact that justifies it.

BARR: Bob, during wartime, you give some powers to the presidency you wouldn't give in peace time. BARR: Do we have a declaration of war, Dana?

ROHRABACHER: You don't have to do that.

BARR: We don't? That makes it even much easier for a president.

...

BARR: Here again, this is absolutely a bizarre conversation where you have a member of Congress saying that it's okay for the president of the United States to ignore U.S. law, to ignore the Constitution, simply because we are in an undeclared war.

The fact of the matter is the law prohibits -- specifically prohibits -- what apparently was done in this case, and for a member of Congress to say, oh, that doesn't matter, I'm proud that the president violated the law is absolutely astounding, Wolf.

ROHRABACHER: Not only proud, we can be grateful to this president. You know, I'll have to tell you, if it was up to Mr. Schumer, Senator Schumer, they probably would have blown up the Brooklyn Bridge. The bottom line is this: in wartime we expect our leaders, yes, to exercise more authority.

Now, I have led the fight to making sure there were sunset provisions in the Patriot Act, for example. So after the war, we go back to recognizing the limits of government. But we want to put the full authority that we have and our technology to use immediately to try to thwart terrorists who are going to -- how about have a nuclear weapon in our cities?

BARR: And the Constitution be damned, Dana?

ROHRABACHER: Well, I'll tell you something, if a nuclear weapon goes off in Washington, DC, or New York or Los Angeles, it'll burn the Constitution as it does. So I'm very happy we have a president that's going to wiretap people's communication with people overseas to make sure that they're not plotting to blow up one of our cities.

BLITZER: We're out of time, but Bob Barr, I'll give you the last word.

BARR: Well, first of all, or last of all, this so-called plot to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge was bogus because it had to do with a group of idiots who were planning to dismantle it with blow torches.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10454316/

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/bro...mostemailedlink

Call me cynical, but I believe that there were a LOT more people like this that were spied on than there were real terrorists trying to harm us. Bush saw threats everywhere. Even in law abiding citizens doing lawful activities. But we'll never know if we continue to let Bush and his bunch through up a wall of "national security" around their activities because he's convienced us that we're "at war".

I say impeach now. We have a president who brakes the law and says he will continue to brake it. Case closed!

The Bush administration is easily the most paranoid and contemptible of the law since the Nixon administration.

The Nixon administration, at least in this area, was worse than Bush. I have a friend who used to work in NSA, and he says that in 1970 Nixon came *THIS CLOSE* to getting us into a nuclear war with East Germany. Late in his presidency, the military decided to ignore White House directives because Nixon had become so paranoid and delusional.

And, of course, the Nixon administration also spied intensively and illegally on U.S. citizens.

I realize that I keep coming back to this, but it just eats at me. They didn't just check the quakers to make sure that they weren't terrorist. Ohhhh no. The government didn't check to be sure things were okay, see that this was a peaceful group engaged in lawful activity and leave. NO! They made the determination that this group represented a threat to our national security.

This is the danger to simply saying 'if you're not doing anything wrong, then you have nothing to fear' and accepting that this type of behavior on the part of our government is ever okay under any circumstance. When the government spies, they aren't simply going to leave when it's found that the citizens are peaceful and law abiding. This group opposed the war and planned a protest (even though we have the CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT to do that), and therefore the government saw them as a threat.

Guys, America cannot allow this to stand.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/12/17/233929/95

Operation Flabbergasted: Let's Watergate Bush
by smintheus [Subscribe]
Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 09:39:29 PM PDT

This cannot stand. In ordering the NSA to spy secretly on America, George Bush has overturned United States Signals Intelligence Directive 18, which prohibits domestic spying by NSA; violated the federal act which created the FISA court to oversee covert domestic investigations; and trampled upon the Fourth Amendment guarantee against warrantless searches. It cannot stand for a day, much less a month while Congress is in recess.

Friday, when Sen. Specter said he'd make investigating the allegations a top priority in January, it was barely possible to pretend that they might be false. But by Saturday's radio address, when Bush defended his policy and insisted it would continue, we had entered a full-blown constitutional crisis. George Bush would love for Congress to back down from a fight next week, to go home grumbling "Wait until next year."

Operation Flabbergasted We cannot let that happen. We have to ensure that by Monday, all hell has broken loose in D.C.

* smintheus's diary :: ::
*

Every Senator needs to know there'll be jolly hell back home if they don't demand Bush stop it now. The MSM needs to be discussing the `constitutional crisis.' There has to be a plan immediately to make this happen. I've got one.

We know that domestic spying by the NSA is Orwellian. We don't need to wait for panels of experts to declare the obvious, that Bush's policies violate the Fourth Amendment in the most fundamental way. Further, it is clear that the White House is panicking over the implications of this leak, very much as the Reagan White House panicked when the Iran Contra story broke and they thought impeachment might be looming. Bush's radio address manages to be both offensive and defensive at one and the same time (it reminds one of the cornered Richard Nixon).

We also know that significant numbers of Senators and journalists are utterly fed up with the Bush administration's record on civil liberties. Some are positively spoiling for a fight (if you don't believe me, check out the grilling Terry Moran gave Alberto Gonzales about torture on Nightline Thursday). So we also know that it's entirely possible for us, at this moment, to drive this issue home once and for all, if we can mount a worthy campaign.

The only campaign that would be worthy of this issue, in my opinion, will be one that produces the biggest fire-storm that Washington has ever seen. If we do not attempt to take back our country now, then when?

We need both coherent goals and effective methods to make this happen. There is little time to lose. Fortunately, as we've shown in the past with internet-based campaigns, things can be organized extremely quickly if people are willing to do their part.

GOALS

As far as possible, our declared goals must be as clear, straightforward, plausible, and uncontroversial as possible. I have no illusions that it will be easy to achieve these goals; George Bush and friends stonewall almost as a matter of course. But our declared goals must throw into stark relief the illegality of the administration's policies and the nature of the constitutional crisis.

I propose that we ask each U.S. Senator to demand that President Bush:

* immediately reverse this directive on domestic spying

* promise to desist in the future from warrantless spying on Americans

* cooperate fully with a bi-partisan investigation of the policy

* release the texts of the directives along with the legal opinions they were based on

* identify to the Senate all residents of the US who were targets of unconstitutional spying

METHODS

The most important things that need to be done are to

* build an ad hoc network to promote this campaign, to include blogs, activist groups, grassroot organizations, local and state Democratic Party organizations, and some media darlings like Randi Rhodes

* contact Senators to make the above requests

* contact journalists covering Washington to alert them to the campaign and to request full coverage of the constitutional crisis that the President has provoked

I've arranged them in the order that they need to be addressed. We will want to have the main outlines of a network in place by late Sunday, if we are to get the word out far and wide on Monday to inundate Senate offices with calls, emails, and faxes demanding action. We can wait until tomorrow to begin advancing along the second and third prongs of this strategy. I'll post another diary tomorrow on those subjects, once this one gets off the ground.

I'm dedicating this first diary to the issue of developing an internet-based network of support for this campaign. When I conceived my "Awaken the Mainstream Media" campaign back in May, it took me days of writing emails and phoning around to create such a network. It worked, but it took more time than we have in this instance. If Kosmopolitans want to see this work, then they'll have to step forward to volunteer to post about this on their own blogs, and to help to contact others who can be roped in to support us.

So who do you know? Who do you read, or listen to? Whose email lists are you on? What local mailing/phone lists can you enlist to get the word out to put pressure on the Senate? What part of this can you help to organize by Sunday?

Seem like a lot of work? It is. Now keep your eye on the prize.

Another one at dailykos on the subject. Just looking at similar stuff out there on this subject.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/12/17/122930/60

WARNING: They're Going After The NYT Leakers!
by Doctor Who [Subscribe]
Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 10:29:30 AM PDT

WARNING! They Are Attempting To Shift Focus!

I admit I didn't see this one coming, but Bush's friends in the MSM (namely Pat Buchanan on MSNBC this morning just after Bush's address) are trying to shift the focus away from investigating the President's crime onto investigating the crime of leaking the story to the NYT. Details Below.

* Doctor Who's diary :: ::
*

Pat on MSNBC tryed to portray the leaking of the President's crime to the NYT as the bigger crime and drew analogies to the Plame affair. He went on to advocate for another Fitz type Justice Dept. investigation of who leaked this classified information to the NYT and predicted subpeonas for a slew of NYT reporters. He tryed to draw analogies to the Plame investigation (Funny, I bet it won't take Bush long to finger the leakers of the Spy story, although here we are years later and he still claims he has no idea who the Plame leaker(s) is/are.

Pat said this would be the big story of 2006, all the while playing down or refusing to discuss anything about whether the President has committed legal and constitutional crimes.

Folks, we cannot allow this "switcher-roo" tactic to succeed. The Dem. on MSNBC did a shitty job of countering Pat's argument and the MSNBC News Bunny seemed to be buying it. We need to portray this for what it is, a diversion away from the real story that Bush has likely used and continues to use powers he does not have under the constitution, and therefore, has/is breaking his oath and the law period.

They want to string up those who witnessed and reported Bush's crime, while letting him skate claiming he abviously has the power to issue these secret (or now, not-so-secret) orders, while those who informed the press are the only real criminals. In other words, "Let's shoot the Messenger(s)!"

We need to stop this ded in its tracks! Spread the word!

I agree. The actions against the Quakers by the current Bush administration smacks of gross abuse of power and the usurpation of the rights of Americans to peacefully demonstrate and dissent against the actions of the Bush administration.

It seems that the Bush administration makes a mockery of the term "democracy" when they actually mean to impose their will and to form a type of dictatorship in its stead. Thank God, Americans have a system of checks and balances to thwart any abuse of power. It's time the Congress acts responsibly and performs its duty to restore the checks and balances its citizens empowered them to do.

Sincerely,

Jesseaw

"We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, & the Pursuit of Happiness: —That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the governed; that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, & to institute new Government, laying it's Foundation on such Principles, & organizing it's Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety & Happiness. Prudence indeed will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light & transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shown that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses & Usurpations and pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty to throw off such Government, & to provide new Guards for their future Security."

Thanks for the articles. Interesting to say the least.

I can actually think of a few reasons why this is a problem. First of all, this action is taking place at a public school and can involve other peoples kids. Secondly, the military has always traditionaly recruited from schools as this activity is between the military and the public school system, it has nothing to do with the activist group and they haven't been invited to be involved. Thirdly, they are interfering with an activity of the U.S. Military and are a group that seems to have some very strong religious ties. All of these factors in one, you do have a situation that can be monitored for security reasons at any time if I am not mistaken.

Also, the government always monitors any groups that try to influence teens in our schools, this is not a new practice at all.

IMO this group simply needs to find a different way to communicate their thoughts on the issue.

I talked to a Naval military recruiter for weeks about a year after high school. I don't remember how he got my name, but he called and called me. I liked the guy, he had a lot of good information, and we discussed a lot of things about where I was headed in life. However, after discussing it with my family I decided not to do it. I gave him a firm no, on about the 4th or 5th phone call and that was about it, he never called back. I probably would have gone in right before the first Iraq war if I had joined.

Just thinking about it, at that age, if I had been visited by a group of anti-military recruiting Quakers after speaking with him; I probably would have joined just out of total disdain for them trying to tell me what to do, after laughing them out of my front door.

On the other hand, listing this group as a "threat" seems a little stupid too. If they are going to monitor peace activist, then maybe they should just label them as peace activists and leave it at that. Duh!!!

http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/17/bush.nsa/index.html

Bush says he signed NSA wiretap order
Adds he OK'd program more than 30 times, will continue to do so

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In acknowledging the message was true, President Bush took aim at the messenger Saturday, saying that a newspaper jeopardized national security by revealing that he authorized wiretaps on U.S. citizens after September 11.

After The New York Times reported, and CNN confirmed, a claim that Bush gave the National Security Agency license to eavesdrop on Americans communicating with people overseas, the president said that his actions were permissible, but that leaking the revelation to the media was illegal.

During an unusual live, on-camera version of his weekly radio address, Bush said such authorization is "fully consistent" with his "constitutional responsibilities and authorities." (Watch Bush explain why he 'authorized the National Security Agency ... to intercept' -- 4:29)

Bush added: "Yesterday the existence of this secret program was revealed in media reports, after being improperly provided to news organizations. As a result, our enemies have learned information they should not have, and the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk."

He acknowledged during the address that he allowed the NSA "to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations."

The highly classified program was crucial to national security and designed "to detect and prevent terrorist attacks," he added. (Transcript)

The NSA eavesdrops on billions of communications worldwide. Although the NSA is barred from domestic spying, it can get warrants issued with the permission of a special court called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court.

The court is set up specifically to issue warrants allowing wiretapping on domestic soil.
'Sad day'

After hearing Bush's response, Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisconsin, said there was no law allowing the president's actions and that "it's a sad day."

"He's trying to claim somehow that the authorization for the Afghanistan attack after 9/11 permitted this, and that's just absurd," Feingold said. "There's not a single senator or member of Congress who thought we were authorizing wiretaps."

He added that the law clearly lays out how to obtain permission for wiretaps.

"If he needs a wiretap, the authority is already there -- the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act," Feingold said. "They can ask for a warrant to do that, and even if there's an emergency situation, they can go for 72 hours as long as they give notice at the end of 72 hours."

Bush defended signing the order by saying that two of the September 11 hijackers who flew the plane into the Pentagon -- Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi -- "communicated while they were in the United States to other members of al Qaeda who were overseas, but we didn't know they were here until it was too late."

He said the authorizations have made it "more likely that killers like these 9/11 hijackers will be identified and located in time, and the activities conducted under this authorization have helped detect and prevent possible terrorist attacks in the United States and abroad."
Re-authorized 30 times

Sources with knowledge of the program told CNN on Friday that Bush signed the secret order in 2002. The sources refused to be identified because the program is classified.

Bush, however, said he authorized the program on several occasions since the September 11 attacks and that he plans on doing it again.

"I have re-authorized this program more than 30 times," he said. "I intend to do so for as long as our nation faces a continuing threat from al Qaeda and related groups."

The New York Times had not responded to Bush's allegations that the paper endangered national security as of Saturday afternoon.

But in a Friday statement, Executive Editor Bill Keller said the newspaper postponed publication of the article for a year at the White House's request, while editors pondered the national security issues surrounding the release of the information.

But after considering the legal and civil liberties aspects, and determining that the story could be written without jeopardizing intelligence operations, the paper ran the story, Keller said, emphasizing that information about many NSA eavesdropping operations is public record.

CNN has not confirmed the exact wording of the president's order.

The political ramifications of the newspaper's report were felt even before Bush acknowledged the report's veracity.

Senators contemplating a vote Friday on whether to renew some controversial portions of the Patriot Act used The New York Times' report as evidence that the government could not be trusted with the broad powers laid out in the act. (Read about the Patriot Act vote)

In particular, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, said such behavior by the executive branch "can't be condoned," and Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York, said the report swayed his decision on the Patriot Act proposal.

"Today's revelation that the government listened in on thousands of phone conversations without getting a warrant is shocking and has greatly influenced my vote," Schumer said. "Today's revelation makes it very clear that we have to be very careful -- very careful."

Specter, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, added Friday that his committee would immediately begin investigating the matter.

What??!!!???? The government does not get to come "monitor" anyone without a damned good reason and proof that a crime is being committed. We are supposed to be a free society. That means that I get to do whatever I want, so long as it is lawful, WITHOUT it being any business whatsoever of any governmental entity. If I go to a PUBLIC school, ask for and receive permission to distribute material, I get to do that and the government doesn't get to spy on me and keep records of what I'm doing! LOTS of people try to influence teens for many different reasons. As long as what they do is legal and they are not disrupting the school, the government has no business playing big brother.

I don't agree with Bob Barr on much but Bob Barr and I do agree on a alot of issues that concern civil liberties because Bob Barr is from the Libertarian wing of the Republican Party.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...1701233_pf.html

Pushing the Limits Of Wartime Powers

By Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, December 18, 2005; A01



In his four-year campaign against al Qaeda, President Bush has turned the U.S. national security apparatus inward to secretly collect information on American citizens on a scale unmatched since the intelligence reforms of the 1970s.

The president's emphatic defense yesterday of warrantless eavesdropping on U.S. citizens and residents marked the third time in as many months that the White House has been obliged to defend a departure from previous restraints on domestic surveillance. In each case, the Bush administration concealed the program's dimensions or existence from the public and from most members of Congress.

Since October, news accounts have disclosed a burgeoning Pentagon campaign for "detecting, identifying and engaging" internal enemies that included a database with information on peace protesters. A debate has roiled over the FBI's use of national security letters to obtain secret access to the personal records of tens of thousands of Americans. And now come revelations of the National Security Agency's interception of telephone calls and e-mails from the United States -- without notice to the federal court that has held jurisdiction over domestic spying since 1978.

Defiant in the face of criticism, the Bush administration has portrayed each surveillance initiative as a defense of American freedom. Bush said yesterday that his NSA eavesdropping directives were "critical to saving American lives" and "consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution." After years of portraying an offensive waged largely overseas, Bush justified the internal surveillance with new emphasis on "the home front" and the need to hunt down "terrorists here at home."

Bush's constitutional argument, in the eyes of some legal scholars and previous White House advisers, relies on extraordinary claims of presidential war-making power. Bush said yesterday that the lawfulness of his directives was affirmed by the attorney general and White House counsel, a list that omitted the legislative and judicial branches of government. On occasion the Bush administration has explicitly rejected the authority of courts and Congress to impose boundaries on the power of the commander in chief, describing the president's war-making powers in legal briefs as "plenary" -- a term defined as "full," "complete," and "absolute."

A high-ranking intelligence official with firsthand knowledge said in an interview yesterday that Vice President Cheney, then-Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet and Michael V. Hayden, then a lieutenant general and director of the National Security Agency, briefed four key members of Congress about the NSA's new domestic surveillance on Oct. 25, 2001, and Nov. 14, 2001, shortly after Bush signed a highly classified directive that eliminated some restrictions on eavesdropping against U.S. citizens and permanent residents.

In describing the briefings, administration officials made clear that Cheney was announcing a decision, not asking permission from Congress. How much the legislators learned is in dispute.

Former senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.), who chaired the Senate intelligence committee and is the only participant thus far to describe the meetings extensively and on the record, said in interviews Friday night and yesterday that he remembers "no discussion about expanding [NSA eavesdropping] to include conversations of U.S. citizens or conversations that originated or ended in the United States" -- and no mention of the president's intent to bypass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

"I came out of the room with the full sense that we were dealing with a change in technology but not policy," Graham said, with new opportunities to intercept overseas calls that passed through U.S. switches. He believed eavesdropping would continue to be limited to "calls that initiated outside the United States, had a destination outside the United States but that transferred through a U.S.-based communications system."

Graham said the latest disclosures suggest that the president decided to go "beyond foreign communications to using this as a pretext for listening to U.S. citizens' communications. There was no discussion of anything like that in the meeting with Cheney."

The high-ranking intelligence official, who spoke with White House permission but said he was not authorized to be identified by name, said Graham is "misremembering the briefings," which in fact were "very, very comprehensive." The official declined to describe any of the substance of the meetings, but said they were intended "to make sure the Hill knows this program in its entirety, in order to never, ever be faced with the circumstance that someone says, 'I was briefed on this but I had no idea that -- ' and you can fill in the rest."

By Graham's account, the official said, "it appears that we held a briefing to say that nothing is different . . . . Why would we have a meeting in the vice president's office to talk about a change and then tell the members of Congress there is no change?"

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), who was also present as then ranking Democrat of the House intelligence panel, said in a statement yesterday evening that the briefing described "President Bush's decision to provide authority to the National Security Agency to conduct unspecified activities." She said she "expressed my strong concerns" but did not elaborate.

The NSA disclosures follow exposure of two other domestic surveillance initiatives that drew shocked reactions from Congress and some members of the public in recent months.

Beginning in October, The Washington Post published articles describing a three-year-old Pentagon agency, the size and budget of which are classified, with wide new authority to undertake domestic investigations and operations against potential threats from U.S. residents and organizations against military personnel and facilities. The Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, began as a small policy-coordination office but has grown to encompass nine directorates and a staff exceeding 1,000. The agency's Talon database, collecting unconfirmed reports of suspicious activity from military bases and organizations around the country, has included "threat reports" of peaceful civilian protests and demonstrations.

CIFA has also been empowered with what the military calls "tasking authority" -- the ability to give operational orders -- over Army, Navy and Air Force units whose combined roster of investigators, about 4,000, is nearly as large as the number of FBI special agents assigned to counterterrorist squads. Pentagon officials said this month they had ordered a review of the program after disclosures, in The Post, NBC News and the washingtonpost.com Web log of William M. Arkin, that CIFA compiled information about U.S. citizens engaging in constitutionally protected political activity such as protests against military recruiting.

In November, The Post disclosed an exponentially growing practice of domestic surveillance under the USA Patriot Act, using FBI demands for information known as "national security letters." Created in the 1970s for espionage and terrorism investigations, the letters enabled secret FBI review of the private telephone and financial records of suspected foreign agents. The Bush administration's guidelines after the Patriot Act transformed those letters by permitting clandestine scrutiny of U.S. residents and visitors who are not alleged to be terrorists or spies.

The Post reported that the FBI has issued tens of thousands of national security letters, extending the bureau's reach as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary Americans. Most of the U.S. residents and citizens whose records were screened, the FBI acknowledged, were not suspected of wrongdoing.

The burgeoning use of national security letters coincided with an unannounced decision to deposit all the information they yield into government data banks -- and to share those private records widely, in the federal government and beyond. In late 2003, the Bush administration reversed a long-standing policy requiring agents to destroy their files on innocent American citizens, companies and residents when investigations closed.

Yesterday's acknowledgment of warrantless NSA eavesdropping brought the most forthright statement from the president that his war on terrorism is targeting not only "enemies across the world" but "terrorists here at home." In the "first war of the 21st century," he said, "one of the most critical battlefronts is the home front."

Bush sidestepped some of the implications by citing examples only of foreigners who infiltrated the United States -- Saudi citizens Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar, two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers. But the most fundamental changes undertaken in the Bush administration's surveillance policy are the ones that have broadened the powers of the NSA, FBI and Pentagon to spy on "U.S. persons" -- American citizens, permanent residents and corporations -- on American soil.

Roger Cressey, who was principal deputy to the White House counterterrorism chief when terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center and a wing of the Pentagon, said "the amount of domestic surveillance is an admission of fundamental gaps in our understanding of what is happening in our country."

Those anxieties about unknown threats have ebbed and flowed since World War I, according to a bipartisan government commission chaired by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. President Woodrow Wilson warned against "the poison of disloyalty" and another loyalty campaign created black lists of accused Communists in the 1950s. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Army and the NSA collected files and eavesdropped on thousands of anti-Vietnam War and civil rights activists.

Congress asserted itself in the 1970s, imposing oversight requirements and passing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies, said FISA "expressly made it a crime for government officials 'acting under color of law' to engage in electronic eavesdropping 'other than pursuant to statute.' " FISA described itself, along with the criminal wiretap statute, as "the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance . . . may be conducted."

No president before Bush mounted a frontal challenge to Congress's authority to limit espionage against Americans. In a Sept. 25, 2002, brief signed by then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, the Justice Department asserted "the Constitution vests in the President inherent authority to conduct warrantless intelligence surveillance (electronic or otherwise) of foreign powers or their agents, and Congress cannot by statute extinguish that constitutional authority."

The brief made no distinction between suspected agents who are U.S. citizens and those who are not. Other Bush administration legal arguments have said the "war on terror" is global and indefinite in scope, effectively removing traditional limits of wartime authority to the times and places of imminent or actual battle.

"There is a lot of discussion out there that we shouldn't be dividing Americans and foreigners, but terrorists and non-terrorists," said Gordon Oehler, a former chief of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center who served on last year's special commission assessing U.S. intelligence.

By law, according to University of Chicago scholar Geoffrey Stone, the differences are fundamental: Americans have constitutional protections that are enforceable in court whether their conversations are domestic or international.

Bush's assertion that eavesdropping takes place only on U.S. calls to overseas phones, Stone said, "is no different, as far as the law is concerned, from saying we only do it on Tuesdays."

Michael J. Woods, who was chief of the FBI's national security law unit when Bush signed the NSA directive, described the ongoing program as "very dangerous." In the immediate aftermath of a devastating attack, he said, the decision was a justifiable emergency response. In 2006, "we ought to be past the time of emergency responses. We ought to have more considered views now. . . . We have time to debate a legal regime and what's appropriate."

Staff writers Charles Lane and Walter Pincus and researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.


© 2005 The Washington Post Company

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

December 18, 2005
In Address, Bush Says He Ordered Domestic Spying
By DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON, Dec. 17 - President Bush acknowledged on Saturday that he had ordered the National Security Agency to conduct an electronic eavesdropping program in the United States without first obtaining warrants, and said he would continue the highly classified program because it was "a vital tool in our war against the terrorists."

In an unusual step, Mr. Bush delivered a live weekly radio address from the White House in which he defended his action as "fully consistent with my constitutional responsibilities and authorities."

He also lashed out at senators, both Democrats and Republicans, who voted on Friday to block the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act, which expanded the president's power to conduct surveillance, with warrants, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The revelation that Mr. Bush had secretly instructed the security agency to intercept the communications of Americans and terrorist suspects inside the United States, without first obtaining warrants from a secret court that oversees intelligence matters, was cited by several senators as a reason for their vote.

"In the war on terror, we cannot afford to be without this law for a single moment," Mr. Bush said forcefully from behind a lectern in the Roosevelt Room, next to the Oval Office. The White House invited cameras in, guaranteeing television coverage.

He said the Senate's action "endangers the lives of our citizens," and added that "the terrorist threat to our country will not expire in two weeks," a reference to the approaching deadline of Dec. 31, when critical provisions of the current law will end.

His statement came just a day before he was scheduled to make a rare Oval Office address to the nation, at 9 p.m. Eastern time on Sunday, celebrating the Iraqi elections and describing what his press secretary on Saturday called the "path forward."

Mr. Bush's public confirmation on Saturday of the existence of one of the country's most secret intelligence programs, which had been known to only a select number of his aides, was a rare moment in his presidency. Few presidents have publicly confirmed the existence of heavily classified intelligence programs like this one.

His admission was reminiscent of Dwight Eisenhower's in 1960 that he had authorized U-2 flights over the Soviet Union after Francis Gary Powers was shot down on a reconnaissance mission. At the time, President Eisenhower declared that "no one wants another Pearl Harbor," an argument Mr. Bush echoed on Saturday in defending his program as a critical component of antiterrorism efforts.

But the revelation of the domestic spying program, which the administration temporarily suspended last year because of concerns about its legality, came in a leak. Mr. Bush said the information had been "improperly provided to news organizations."

As a result of the report, he said, "our enemies have learned information they should not have, and the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk. Revealing classified information is illegal, alerts our enemies and endangers our country."

As recently as Friday, when he was interviewed by Jim Lehrer of PBS, Mr. Bush refused to confirm the report the previous evening in The New York Times that in 2002 he authorized the spying operation by the security agency, which is usually barred from intercepting domestic communications. While not denying the report, he called it "speculation" and said he did not "talk about ongoing intelligence operations."

But as the clamor over the revelation rose and Vice President Dick Cheney and Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff, went to Capitol Hill on Friday to answer charges that the program was an illegal assumption of presidential powers, even in a time of war, Mr. Bush and his senior aides decided to abandon that approach.

"There was an interest in saying more about it, but everyone recognized its highly classified nature," one senior administration official said, speaking on background because, he said, the White House wanted the president to be the only voice on the issue. "This is directly taking on the critics. The Democrats are now in the position of supporting our efforts to protect Americans, or defend positions that could weaken our nation's security."

Democrats saw the issue differently. "Our government must follow the laws and respect the Constitution while it protects Americans' security and liberty," said Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee and the Senate's leading critic of the Patriot Act.

Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has said he would conduct hearings on why Mr. Bush took the action.

"In addition to what the president said today," Mr. Specter said, "the Judiciary Committee will be interested in its oversight capacity to learn from the attorney general or others in the Department of Justice the statutory or other legal basis for the electronic surveillance, whether there was any judicial review involved, what was the scope of the domestic intercepts, what standards were used to identify Al Qaeda or other terrorist callers, and what was done with this information."

In a statement, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, said she was advised of the president's decision shortly after he made it and had "been provided with updates on several occasions."

"The Bush administration considered these briefings to be notification, not a request for approval," Ms. Pelosi said. "As is my practice whenever I am notified about such intelligence activities, I expressed my strong concerns during these briefings."

In his statement on Saturday, Mr. 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 current law, which allows the president 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.

The president said on Saturday that he acted in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks because the United States had failed to detect communications that might have tipped them off to the plot. He said that two of the hijackers who flew a jet into the Pentagon, Nawaf al-Hamzi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, "communicated while they were in the United States to other members of Al Qaeda who were overseas. But we didn't know they were here, until it was too late."

As a result, "I authorized the National Security Agency, consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, to intercept the international communications of people with known links to Al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations," Mr. Bush said. "This is a highly classified program that is crucial to our national security."

Mr. Bush said that every 45 days the program was reviewed, based on "a fresh intelligence assessment of terrorist threats to the continuity of our government and the threat of catastrophic damage to our homeland."

"I have reauthorized this program more than 30 times since the Sept. 11 attacks, and I intend to do so for as long as our nation faces a continuing threat from Al Qaeda and related groups," Mr. Bush said. He said Congressional leaders had been repeatedly briefed on the program, and that intelligence officials "receive extensive training to ensure they perform their duties consistent with the letter and intent of the authorization."

The Patriot Act vote in the Senate, a day after Mr. Bush was forced to accept an amendment sponsored by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, that places limits on interrogation techniques that can be used by C.I.A. officers and other nonmilitary personnel, was a setback to the president's assertion of broad powers. In both cases, he lost a number of Republicans along with almost all Democrats.

"This reflects a complete transformation of the debate in America over torture," said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director of Human Rights Watch. "After the attacks, no politician was heard expressing any questions about the executive branch's treatment of captured terrorists."

Mr. Bush's unusual radio address is part of a broader effort this weekend to regain the initiative, after weeks in which the political ground has shifted under his feet. The Oval Office speech on Sunday, a formal setting that he usually tries to avoid, is his first there since March 2003, when he informed the world that he had ordered the Iraq invasion.

White House aides say they intend for this speech to be a bookmark in the Iraq experience: As part of the planned address, Mr. Bush appears ready to at least hint at reductions in troop levels.

There are roughly 160,000 American troops in Iraq, a number that was intended to keep order for Thursday's parliamentary elections.

The American troop level was already scheduled to decline to 138,000 - what the military calls its "baseline" level - after the election.

But on Friday, as the debate in Washington swirled over the president's order, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top American commander in Iraq, hinted that further reductions may be on the way.

"We're doing our assessment, and I'll make some recommendations in the coming weeks about whether I think it's prudent to go below the baseline," General Casey told reporters in Baghdad.



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December 18, 2005
Eavesdropping Effort Began Soon After Sept. 11 Attacks
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN
WASHINGTON - The National Security Agency first began to conduct warrantless eavesdropping on telephone calls and e-mail messages between the United States and Afghanistan months before President Bush officially authorized a broader version of the agency's special domestic collection program, according to current and former government officials.

The security agency surveillance of telecommunications between the United States and Afghanistan began in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington, the officials said.

The agency operation included eavesdropping on communications between Americans and other individuals in the United States and people in Afghanistan without the court-approved search warrants that are normally required for such domestic intelligence activities.

On Saturday, President Bush confirmed the existence of the security agency's domestic intelligence collection program and defended it, saying it had been instrumental in disrupting terrorist cells in America.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration and senior American intelligence officials quickly decided that existing laws and regulations restricting the government's ability to monitor American communications were too rigid to permit quick and flexible access to international calls and e-mail traffic involving terrorism suspects. Bush administration officials also believed that the intelligence community, including the Central Intelligence Agency and the N.S.A., had been too risk-averse before the attacks and had missed opportunities to prevent them.

In the days after the attacks, the C.I.A. determined that Al Qaeda, which had found a haven in Afghanistan, was responsible. Congress quickly passed a resolution authorizing the president to conduct a war on terrorism, and the security agency was secretly ordered to begin conducting comprehensive coverage of all communications into and out of Afghanistan, including those to and from the United States, current and former officials said.

It could not be learned whether Mr. Bush issued a formal written order authorizing the early surveillance of communications between the United States and Afghanistan that was later superseded by the broader order. A White House spokeswoman, Maria Tamburri, declined to comment Saturday on the Afghanistan monitoring, saying she could not go beyond Mr. Bush's speech.

Current and former American intelligence and law enforcement officials who discussed the matter were granted anonymity because the intelligence-gathering program is highly classified. Some had direct knowledge of the program.

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. Several current and former officials have said that they believe the security agency operation began virtually on the fly in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The early, narrow focus on communications in and out of Afghanistan reflected the ad hoc nature of the government's initial approach to counterterrorism policies in the days after Sept. 11 attacks.

But after the United States-led invasion of Afghanistan succeeded in overthrowing the Taliban government in late 2001, Al Qaeda lost its sanctuary, and Osama bin Laden and other Qaeda leaders scattered to Pakistan, Iran and other countries. As counterterrorism operations grew, the Bush administration wanted the security agency secretly to expand its surveillance as well. By 2002, Mr. Bush gave the agency broader surveillance authority.

In the early years of the operation, there were few, if any, controls placed on the activity by anyone outside the security agency, officials say. It was not until 2004, when several officials raised concerns about its legality, that the Justice Department conducted its first audit of the operation. Security agency officials had been given the power to select the people they would single out for eavesdropping inside the United States without getting approval for each case from the White House or the Justice Department, the officials said.

While the monitoring program was conducted without court-approved warrants, senior Bush administration officials said the far-reaching decision to move ahead with the program was justified by the pressing need to identify whether any remaining "sleeper cells" were still operating within the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks and whether they were planning "follow-on attacks."

Mr. Bush, in his speech on Saturday, cited the disruptions of "terrorist cells" since Sept. 11 in New York, Oregon, Virginia, California, Texas and Ohio as evidence of a very real threat. And he pointed to overseas communications by two of the Sept. 11 hijackers who were living in the San Diego area as evidence that the security agency needed the power and flexibility to track international communications.

The two men "communicated to other members of Al Qaeda who were overseas," Mr. Bush said. "But we didn't know they were here, until it was too late."

In his speech, Mr. Bush pointed to the layers of oversight and review that are built into the secret spying program to ensure that it is "consistent with the letter and intent of the authorization."



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HI, I haven't been around much lately, but this is definitely impeachable, or so the founding fathers thought.

"So far as might concern the misbehavior of the Executive in perverting the instructions or contravening the views of the Senate, we need not be apprehensive of the want of a disposition in that body to punish the abuse of their confidence or to vindicate their own authority."

-Federalist #66

The constitutional crisis is almost on us. Bush has defied the authority of Congress before, but never openly admitted to violating the law. Now he has. In Alexander Hamilton's view, this can only end in impeachment or monarchy. Hamilton believed that human nature would drive the Senate to assert it's ultimate power rather than acquiesce in their own demise.

George Bush has now issued a challenge. And one not to wait 11 months til the dems win the house.
He basically has said come and get me if you d