I disagree. This should only be an impeachable offense if someone can proove this was used in a way that harmed an American unjustly by the President specifically, which isn't going to happen. Everyone knows America is in a war right now and if they have nothing to hide should not be affected by this. This, unfortunately was one of the things that had to be done as a componenet of the information war. We allowed terrorist to get into this country, and we had to find them, this was one of the way to do it. I think the only issue here should be finding out if this power, since enacted, has been used in an abusive way, such as someone high up using this power to spy on another American because he thinks he is cheating on his wife (sound familiar?).
Otherwise, the NSA has to do what they have to do to protect us at home, and I support it.

LINK


Bush says he authorized eavesdropping in U.S.
President lashes out at lawmakers who revealed secret program



• Bush defends spying, urges Patriot Act renewal
Dec. 17: President says he personally approved eavesdropping in U.S. and blasts lawmakers for revealing secret program.
MSNBC

Updated: 11:08 a.m. ET Dec. 17, 2005
WASHINGTON - President Bush said Saturday he personally has authorized a secret eavesdropping program in the U.S. more than 30 times since the Sept. 11 attacks and he lashed out at those involved in publicly revealing the program.

"This is a highly classified program that is crucial to our national security," he said in a radio address delivered live from the White House's Roosevelt Room.

"This authorization is a vital tool in our war against the terrorists. It is critical to saving American lives. The American people expect me to do everything in my power, under our laws and Constitution, to protect them and their civil liberties and that is exactly what I will continue to do as long as I am president of the United States," Bush said.

Story continues below ↓
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Angry members of Congress have demanded an explanation of the program, first revealed in Friday's New York Times and whether the monitoring by the National Security Agency violates civil liberties.



Bush said the program was narrowly designed and used "consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution." He said it is used only to intercept the international communications of people inside the United States who have been determined to have "a clear link" to al-Qaida or related terrorist organizations.

The program is reviewed every 45 days, using fresh threat assessments, legal reviews by the Justice Department, White House counsel and others, and information from previous activities under the program, the president said.

Without identifying specific lawmakers, Bush said congressional leaders have been briefed more than a dozen times on the program's activities.

The president also said the intelligence officials involved in the monitoring receive extensive training to make sure civil liberties are not violated.

Appearing angry at points during his eight-minute address, Bush said he had reauthorized the program more than 30 times since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and plans to continue doing so.

"I intend to do so for as long as our nation faces a continuing threat from al-Qaida and related groups," he said.

The president contended the program has helped "detect and prevent possible terrorist attacks in the U.S. and abroad," but did not provide specific examples.

He said it is designed in part to fix problems raised by the Sept. 11 commission, which found that two of the suicide hijackers were communicating from San Diego with al-Qaida operatives overseas.

"The activities I have authorized make it more likely that killers like these 9/11 hijackers will be identified and located in time," he said.

Bush's remarks echoed — in many cases word-for-word — those issued Friday night by a senior intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity. His highly unusual discussion of classified activities showed the sensitive nature of the program, whose existence was revealed as Congress was trying to renew the terrorism-fighting Patriot Act and complicated that effort, a top priority of Bush's.

Senate Democrats joined with a handful of Republicans on Friday to stall the bill. Those opposing the renewal of key provisions of the act that are expiring say they threaten constitutional liberties.

Reacting to Bush's defense of the NSA program, Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., said the president's remarks were "breathtaking in how extreme they were."

Feingold said it was "absurd" that Bush said he relied on his inherent power as president to authorize the wiretaps.

"If that's true, he doesn't need the Patriot Act because he can just make it up as he goes along. I tell you, he's President George Bush, not King George Bush. This is not the system of government we have and that we fought for," Feingold told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

The president had harsh words for those who talked about the program to the media, saying their actions were illegal and improper.

"As a result, our enemies have learned information they should not have," he said. "The unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk."

And the spin begins....

Pat Buchanan on MSNBC says, (paraphrased) is that "far more serious than the president spying on people is the LEAK of this information to the media"

"there will be a criminal investigation into this LEAK"

"this is going to be a major, major investigation"




I don't give a dang who leaked it or who got the story....

I say its IMPEACHMENT TIME !!!!

The problems I see are whether or not there are checks and balances by Legislative and Judicial branches. Is there due process to determine probable cause that a subject is in communication with terrorists, Could NSA resources be used for industrial espionage or to spy on rival political campaigns. Could NSA assets be used to smear a political oponent? Could this information be expropriated to do identity theft?

There needs to be oversight, transparency, and due process. If Bush is removing constitutional safeguards that protect our due process and privacy as citizens, then he musy be confronted with articles of impeachment,

9/11 was over 4 years ago. When do we return to normal?

Ok- on MSNBC during the discussion with Buchanan, there was another dude on-
he said that there is a "secret" court available on a moment's notice to issue the necessary authorizations to wire taps or whatever:

THIS PROVIDES JUDICIAL REVIEW instantaneously.

I missed the name of this Court... did you catch it, Jeff ?

(And, no, apparently Bush has not used this court)

nrns posted this last night:

http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...27&#entry458127

take the time to read the first part of Lehrer's interview with Bush, at least !

December 18, 2005
In Speech, 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 his weekly radio address from the White House, which, in an unusual step, he delivered live, Mr. Bush 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 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 suspected terrorists 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 from behind a lectern in the Roosevelt Room, next to the Oval Office.

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.

Mr. Bush's public confirmation Saturday morning 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 the presidency. But he linked it with a forceful assertion of his own authority to act without court approval, making it clear that he planned to resist any effort to infringe on his powers.

As recently as Friday, when he was interviewed by Jim Lehrer of PBS, Mr. Bush refused to confirm the report that day in The New York Times that in 2002 he authorized the domestic spying operation by the security agency, which is usually barred from intercepting domestic communications.

But as the clamor over the revelation rose and Vice President Dick Cheney went to Capitol Hill to counter charges that the program was an illegal assumption of presidential powers, even in a time of war, Mr. Bush and his senior aides decided that it was futile to dismiss the report as "speculation," the word he used in his interview.

In his radio address, Mr. Bush sharply criticized the leak of the information, saying that it 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."

But 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.

Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said on Friday that "there is no doubt this is inappropriate" and that he would conduct hearings to determine why Mr. Bush took the action.

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." That review involves the attorney general, Alberto R. Gonzales, and Mr. Bush's counsel, Harriet E. Miers, whom Mr. Bush unsuccessfully tried to nominate to the Supreme Court this year.

"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," the president 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, coming 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 Central Intelligence Agency officers and other non-military 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." That has now "changed fundamentally," Mr. Malinowski said, a view that even some of Mr. Bush's aides and former aides echoed.

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. On Sunday evening he has scheduled a live television address from the Oval Office to celebrate the success of the elections in Iraq, and to declare that they are evidence that he made the right decision to depose Saddam Hussein.

The last time Mr. Bush delivered such an address, in the formal setting that he usually tries to avoid, was in March 2003, when he informed the world that he had ordered the Iraq invasion.

As part of the planned address, Mr. Bush appears ready to at least hint at reductions in the troop levels in Iraq, which he has said in a series of four recent speeches on Iraq strategy could be the ultimate result if Iraqi security forces are able to begin to perform more security operations currently conducted by American forces.

Currently, there are roughly 160,000 American troops in Iraq, a number that was intended to keep order for Friday's parliamentary elections, which were conducted with little violence and an unexpectedly heavy turnout of Sunnis, the ethnic minority that ruled the country under Mr. Hussein's reign. The American troop level was already scheduled to decline to 138,000 - what the military calls its "baseline" level of troops - after the election.

But on Friday, as the debate in Washington swirled over the president's order to the N.S.A., 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 make some recommendations in the coming weeks about whether I think it's prudent to go below the baseline," Gen. Casey told reporters in Baghdad.

In Washington, officials said that could enable Mr. Bush to point to deeper cuts in coming months, assuming that the new government forms and the insurgency is held in check. The Army, for example, has prepared plans to hold back one brigade that was scheduled to enter Iraq and to assign some soldiers from another brigade to train Iraqis and guard utilities and other public infrastructure, Pentagon civilian and military officials say. Under these plans, a Germany-based brigade of the First Armored Division, now in Kuwait, would remain there as a quick-reaction force; all or part of the brigade also could be sent home from Kuwait should the security in Iraq situation settle down in the weeks after the vote, officials said. An Army brigade is 3,000 to 5,000 troops, but can have additional supporting units attached to it.

A brigade of the First Infantry Division based at Fort Riley, Kan., would be sent to Iraq in smaller units, and not all at once, under the proposals. Some soldiers from the brigade could be sent to Iraq to help train Iraqi security forces, while others might be sent to Iraq subsequently to guard utilities, infrastructure and other important locations as required next year, Pentagon civilian and military officials said.

It is unclear how far Mr. Bush may be prepared to go in his Oval Office speech to committing to troop reductions; in his four recent speeches on Iraq he said repeatedly that troop levels would decline only as Iraqi and American forces accomplished several objectives: Breaking the back of the insurgency, protecting the new government, and making sure that terror groups cannot use Iraq as a launching pad for new attacks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/18/politics...agewanted=print

December 17, 2005
Transcript
President Bush's Address
Following is a transcription of President Bush’s weekly radio address yesterday as recorded by The New York Times.

As president, I took an oath to defend the Constitution and I have no greater responsibility than to protect our people, our freedom and our way of life.

On Sept. 11, 2001, our freedom and way of life came under attack by brutal enemies who killed nearly 3,000 innocent Americans. We’re fighting these enemies across the world. Yet in this first war of the 21st century, one of the most critical battlefronts is the home front. And since Sept. 11, we’ve been on the offensive against the terrorists plotting within our borders.

One of the first actions we took to protect America after our nation was attacked was to ask Congress to pass the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act tore down the legal and bureaucratic wall that kept law enforcement and intelligence authorities from sharing vital information about terrorist threats. And the Patriot Act allowed federal investigators to pursue terrorists with tools they already used against other criminals.

Congress passed this law with a large bipartisan majority, including a vote of 98 to 1 in the United States Senate. Since then, America’s law enforcement personnel have used this critical law to prosecute terrorist operatives and supporters and to break up terrorist cells in New York, Oregon, Virginia, California, Texas and Ohio.

The Patriot Act has accomplished exactly what it was designed to do. It is protecting American liberty and saved American lives. Yet key provisions of this law are set to expire in two weeks.

The terrorist threat to our country will not expire in two weeks. The terrorists want to attack America again and inflict even greater damage than they did on Sept. 11. Congress has a responsibility to ensure that law enforcement and intelligence officials have the tools they need to protect the American people.

The House of Representatives passed reauthorization of the Patriot Act, yet a minority of senators filibustered to block the renewal of the Patriot Act when it came up for a vote yesterday. That decision is irresponsible and it endangers the lives of our citizens.

The senators who are filibustering must stop their delaying tactics and the Senate must vote to reauthorize the Patriot Act.

In the war on terror we cannot afford to be without this law for a single moment. To fight the war on terror, I’m using authority vested in me by Congress, including the joint authorization for use of military force, which passed overwhelmingly in the first week after Sept. 11. I’m also using constitutional authority vested in me as commander in chief.

In the weeks following the terrorist attacks on our nation, 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. Before we intercept these communications, the government must have information that establishes a clear link to these terrorist networks.

This is a highly classified program that is crucial to our national security. Its purpose is to detect and prevent terrorist attacks against the United States, our friends and allies.

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. Revealing classified information is illegal, alerts our enemies and endangers our country.

As the 9/11 Commission pointed out, it was clear that terrorists inside the United States were communicating with terrorists abroad before the Sept. 11 attacks. And the commission criticized our nation’s inability to uncover links between terrorists here at home and terrorists abroad.

Two of the terrorist hijackers who flew a jet in the Pentagon, Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid al-Midhar, 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.

The authorization I gave the National Security Agency after Sept. 11 helped address that problem in a way that is fully consistent with my constitutional responsibilities and authorities.

The activities I have authorized make 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.

The activities I authorized are reviewed approximately every 45 days. Each review is based on a fresh intelligment assessment of terrorist threats to the continuity of our government and the threat of catastrophic damage to our homeland.

During each assessment, previous activities under the authorization are reviewed. The review includes approval by our nation’s top legal officials, including the attorney general and the counsel to the president.

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.

The N.S.A.’s activities under this authorization are thoroughly reviewed by the Justice Department and N.S.A.’s top legal officials, including N.S.A.’s general counsel and inspector general.

Leaders in Congress have been briefed more than a dozen times on this authorization and the activities conducted under it. Intelligence officials involved in this activities also receive extensive training to ensure they perform their duties consistent with the letter and intent of the authorization.

This authorization is a vital tool in our war against the terrorists. It is critical to saving American lives. The American people expect me to do everything in my power under our laws and Constitution to protect them and their civil liberties. And that is exactly what I will continue to do so long as I’m the president of the United States.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/17/politics...agewanted=print

Here is the WaPo take on the Presiden'ts speech.

President Acknowledges Approving Secretive Eavesdropping
Bush Also Urges Congress to Extend Patriot Act

By Peter Baker and Lexie Verdon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 17, 2005; 12:12 PM



President Bush today acknowledged that he had secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on international communications of Americans and other domestic residents with known links to al Qaeda.

The controversial order has been approved by legal authorities in his administration, Bush said, and he added that members of Congress had been notified of it more than a dozen times.

He defended his decision to sign the secret order, calling the program a "vital tool in our war against terrorists" and "critical to saving American lives."

"This is a highly classified program that is crucial to our national security," a stern-looking Bush said. "Its purpose is to detect and prevent terrorist attacks against the United States, our friends, and allies. . . .And the activities conducted under this authorization have helped detect and prevent possible terrorist attacks in the United States and abroad."

"I have reauthorized this program more than 30 times since the September the 11th attacks, and I intend to do so for as long as our nation faces a continuing threat from al Qaeda and related groups," Bush added.

The disclosure of the program, first reported in yesterday's editions of the New York Times, raised strong protests from congressional leaders of both parties, and key members of Congress yesterday called for hearings into the president's action.

Bush today also strongly urged the Senate to pass the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act, an anti-terrorism bill passed overwhelmingly by Congress shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Key provisions of the law are scheduled to expire at the end of the month, but concerns have been raised recently its effect on the possible erosion of Americans' civil liberties. Yesterday, with the news of the NSA domestic eavesdropping program reverberating around Capitol Hill, opponents of the bill in the Senate blocked efforts to pass renew the Patriot Act.

"That decision is irresponsible, and it endangers the lives of our citizens. The senators who are filibustering must stop their delaying tactics, and the Senate must vote to reauthorize the Patriot Act," Bush said. "In the war on terror, we cannot afford to be without this law for a single moment."

Noting that the act expires in two weeks, he said, "The terrorist threat to our country will not expire in two weeks."

The president used his weekly Saturday morning address to the country to talk about the growing furor over the NSA secret eavesdropping program. In a sign of the interest in the speech, instead of the usual taped radio speech, the president spoke live this morning and it was carried on television. The speech ran about seven minutes, slightly longer than his usual radio addresses.

He chastised the news accounts, saying, "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."

Bush said that he authorized the program "using constitutional authority vested in me as commander-in-chief." He argued that the program is consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, and used "to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations."

"The activities I have authorized make it more likely that killers like these 9/11 hijackers will be identified and located in time," Bush said. "And the activities conducted under this authorization have helped detect and prevent possible terrorist attacks in the United States and abroad."

He said the surveillance is reviewed about every 45 days and fresh intelligence about the subjects is considered. Those involved in the reviews include the "nation's top legal officials, including the attorney general and the counsel to the president." The NSA's top legal officials, including NSA's general counsel and inspector general, are also part of the review, he said.

"The American people expect me to do everything under my power under our laws and Constitution to protect them and their civil liberties," Bush said, "and that is exactly what I will continue to do so long as I am the president of the United States."

Bush took no questions after his comments.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...1700456_pf.html

Correct Pie, which makes it seem highly irregular (to say the least) that they did not avail themselves of this legal authorization. How can anyone then not assume that this activity was intended to bypass legal authority and thus be in violation of the 1978 law?

We don't know who was being watched or when...but if Larry Johnson is correct about Bolton resurfacing in conjunction with these NSA intercepts etc it could have been pre-war intel related...... more lies!


BTW did you catch bush's 'patriot' speech this morning and Feingold's reply?
CNN truncated Feingold's remarks but he got the message out. Essentially that bush is not a king.....he thinks he can do anything he likes etc....

Well gee whiz. I guess if you have nothing to hide, you wouldn't mind the police breaking into your house in the middle of the night and going through your belongings.

This is still America, and you still have rights in this country (for now, anyway--after a few more years of Republican rule, who knows?). If you subscribe to the "rights only protect criminals" philosophy (or as I like to call it, the "it can't happen to me" philosophy), then I guess you'd be just hunky-dory with trashing the Constitution altogether. Why would you want all the rights it guarantees you.........unless you have something to hide, right? Luckily, since repealing the Constitution and trampling on people's rights is right up your alley, Bush is exactly the President for you. Soon Americans will have no rights left, and you'll be just as happy as a clam.

Here's an idea. If you ever get tired of living in a country where people have rights to not be spyed on by their own government, then feel free to move to Red China or Afghanistan. You'll feel right at home..............and very well protected too. Because we all know that the REAL threat to YOU comes from OUTSIDE forces who OPPOSE the government, rather than the government itself that sees you as nothing more than an impediment to its goals.

This is a wonderful piece. It is a must read.

Unclaimed Territory
by Glenn Greenwald

Saturday, December 17, 2005
Bush's unchecked Executive power v. the Founding principles of the U.S.

Underlying all of the excesses and abuses of executive power claimed by the Bush Administration is a theory of absolute, unchecked power vested in the Presidency which literally could not be any more at odds with the central, founding principles of this country.

As this morning’s New York Times analysis put it in describing the rationale behind the Adminstration's violations of the Foreign Intelligence Security Act, pursuant to which it has been secretly spying on the commuincations of American citizens without judicial warrants:






As the Times reports, Bush's claim to absolute executive power has its origins principally in one document:



a Sept. 25, 2001, memorandum [by the Justice Department’s John Yoo] that said no statute passed by Congress "can place any limits on the president's determinations as to any terrorist threat, the amount of military force to be used in response, or the method, timing and nature of the response."




The notion that one of the three branches of our Government can claim power unchecked by the other two branches is precisely what the Founders sought, first and foremost, to preclude. And the fear that a U.S. President would attempt to seize power unchecked by the law or by the other branches – i.e., that the Executive would seize the powers of the British King – was the driving force behind the clear and numerous constitutional limitations placed on Executive power. It is these very limitations which the Bush Administration is claiming that it has the power to disregard because the need for enhanced national security in time of war vests the President with unchecked power.

But that theory of the Executive unconstrained by law is completely repulsive to the founding principles of the country, as well as to the promises made by the Founders in order to extract consent from a monarchy-fearing public to the creation of executive power vested in a single individual. The notion that all of that can be just whimsically tossed aside whenever the nation experiences external threats is as contrary to the country’s founding principles as it is dangerous.

It cannot be said that the Founders were unaware of the potential for national emergencies and external threats. They engaged in a war with the British which was at least as much of an existential threat to the Republic as those posed by 9/11 and related threats of Islamic extremism. Notwithstanding those threats, the Founders, in creating an Executive branch, sought first and foremost to ensure that the President could never wield unchecked powers which would exist above and separate from Congressionally enacted laws.

Among recent Republican Administrations, this theory of the unchecked President is not new. Digby recalls Richard Nixon's endorsement of it, and the theory came to life in the Iran-Contra scandal, where the Reagan Administration unilaterally deemed it necessary to U.S. national security to arm the Nicaraguan contras and then asserted for itself the power to circumvent the law enacted by the Congress which prohibited exactly that.

But the situation we have now is far more egregious, and far more dangerous, because the Administration is not even bothering to pretend now (as the Reagan Administration at least did) that the Executive acts undertaken really did adhere to Congressional intent, or alternatively, to the extent that such acts violated Congressional mandates, the acts were simply the by-product of overzealous and rogue officials who broke the law without the knowledge or approval of President Reagan.

The Bush Administration’s position now is almost the opposite of that posture, in that the Administration is expressly claiming that the President does have the right to violate laws of Congress because his executive power is absolute and thus cannot be restricted by anything. And rather than applying this theory of unchecked executive power to a single case (as the Reagan Administration did in Iran-contra), the Bush Administration has arrogated unto itself this monarchical power as a general proposition, applicable to each and every issue which can be said to relate, however generally, to this undeclared "war" against terrorism.

This view of the Presidency – which now exists not just in odious theory but in real, live, breathing form vested in George Bush – is precisely what the monarchy-fearing Founders insisted should never occur and, with the enactment of the U.S. Constitution, would never occur.

This absolute power claimed and enthusiastically exercised by George Bush violates not just specific Constitutional limitations, but the core principles of the Constitution: that we are a nation of laws not men; that each branch shall be "co-equal" to the others and checked and limited by the other two; and that the people shall retain ultimate power by vesting in them the right to enact supreme laws through the Congress which shall bind all other citizens, including the President.

That the Bush Administration’s claim to unchecked and supra-legal Executive power is squarely inconsistent with basic constitutional principles is conclusively demonstrated by James Madison’s Federalist No. 48, which is devoted to the principle that liberty cannot be maintained unless each branch remains accountable and subordinate to the others:





Similarly, Madison, in Federalist No. 51, defined the central objective for avoiding tyranny as ensuring that no branch be able to claim for itself powers which are absolute and unchecked by the other branches:



In particular, Madison emphasized in Federalist 51 that liberty could be preserved only if the laws enacted by the people through the Congress were supreme and universally binding:




Hamilton made the same point in Federalist No. 73. where he emphasized:




To the Founders, the defining characteristics of the tyrannical British King was that he possessed precisely those powers which the Constitution prohibits but which the Bush Administration is now claiming it can exercise. From Federalist 70:




Based on the fear of such unchecked executive power, Federalist 69 emphasized that unlike the British King, who did possess the absolute power to nullify duly enacted laws , the sole power possessed by the President to negate a law enacted by the Congress -- including with regard to matters of national security and war -- is the President’s qualified (i.e., override-able) veto power:





An extremely potent demonstration that the Bush Administration’s claim to unchecked Executive Power is fundamentally inconsistent with the most basic constitutional safeguards comes from one of the unlikeliest corners – Antonin Scalia’s dissent in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 124 S.Ct. 2633 (2004):






Both the Bush Administration’s theory of its own unchecked power and its indiscriminate and aggressive use of that power to violate Congressional law contradicts every constitutional principle created to ensure that we do not live under unchecked Executive tyranny. If the President is allowed to get away with secretly decreeing that he can violate the law and then doing exactly that, then there really are no remaining checks on Executive power -- and we have, without hyperbole, arrived at the very definition of tyranny.

The country has, more or less with a quiet complacency, stood by while this Administration imprisoned American citizens with no due process, while the Administration sanctioned torture and then used it to extract "evidence" to justify those detentions, and while the Administration exploited the fear of terrorist acts to bestow onto itself unprecedented powers.

If the naked assertion of absolute power by the Bush Administration -- and the use of that power to eavesdrop on American citizens without any judicial review -- does not finally prompt the public regardless of partisan allegiance to take a stand against this undiluted claim to real tyrannical power, then it is impossible to imagine what would ever prompt such a stand.

UPDATE: The more one thinks about the fact that the New York Times was aware of this patently illegal behavior for a full year and concealed it from the public because the Administration told it keep quiet, the more disturbing that complicity becomes.

About Me

Name:Glenn Greenwald Location:Rio de Janeiro & NYC
Until this year, I was a litigator in NYC specializing in First Amendment challenges (including some of the highest-profile free speech cases over the past few years), civil rights cases, and corporate and security fraud matters. I am currently living most of the time in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (the rest in NYC).


E-mail: GGreenwald@gclaw.us


http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2005/12...ve-power-v.html

OMG!!! The most appalling presidency in the entire history of this country just ADMITTED he approved spying on his own people. We are officially a Third World country.



Bush Acknowledges Approving Eavesdropping
By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer


WASHINGTON - President Bush said Saturday he has no intention of stopping his personal authorizations of a post-Sept. 11 secret eavesdropping program in the U.S., lashing out at those involved in revealing it while defending it as crucial to preventing future attacks.

"This is a highly classified program that is crucial to our national security," he said in a radio address delivered live from the White House's Roosevelt Room.

"This authorization is a vital tool in our war against the terrorists. It is critical to saving American lives. The American people expect me to do everything in my power, under our laws and Constitution, to protect them and their civil liberties and that is exactly what I will continue to do as long as I am president of the United States," Bush said.

Angry members of Congress have demanded an explanation of the program, first revealed in Friday's New York Times and whether the monitoring by the National Security Agency without obtaining warrants from a court violates civil liberties. One Democrat said in response to Bush's remarks on the radio that Bush was acting more like a king than the elected president of a democracy.

Bush said the program was narrowly designed and used "consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution." He said it is used only to intercept the international communications of people inside the United States who have been determined to have "a clear link" to al-Qaida or related terrorist organizations.

The program is reviewed every 45 days, using fresh threat assessments, legal reviews by the Justice Department, White House counsel and others, and information from previous activities under the program, the president said.

Without identifying specific lawmakers, Bush said congressional leaders have been briefed more than a dozen times on the program's activities.

The president also said the intelligence officials involved in the monitoring receive extensive training to make sure civil liberties are not violated.

Appearing angry at points during his eight-minute address, Bush said he had reauthorized the program more than 30 times since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and plans to continue doing so.

"I intend to do so for as long as our nation faces a continuing threat from al-Qaida and related groups," he said.

The president contended the program has helped "detect and prevent possible terrorist attacks in the U.S. and abroad," but did not provide specific examples.

He said it is designed in part to fix problems raised by the Sept. 11 commission, which found that two of the suicide hijackers were communicating from San Diego with al-Qaida operatives overseas.

"The activities I have authorized make it more likely that killers like these 9-11 hijackers will be identified and located in time," he said.

In an effort by the administration that appeared coordinated to stem criticism, Bush's remarks echoed — in many cases word-for-word — those issued Friday night by a senior intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity. The president's highly unusual discussion of classified activities showed the sensitive nature of the program, whose existence was revealed as Congress was trying to renew the terrorism-fighting Patriot Act and complicated that effort, a top priority of Bush's.

Senate Democrats joined with a handful of Republicans on Friday to stall the bill. Those opposing the renewal of key provisions of the act that are expiring say they threaten constitutional liberties.

Reacting to Bush's defense of the NSA program, Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., said the president's remarks were "breathtaking in how extreme they were."

Feingold said it was "absurd" that Bush said he relied on his inherent power as president to authorize the wiretaps.

"If that's true, he doesn't need the Patriot Act because he can just make it up as he goes along. I tell you, he's President George Bush, not King George Bush. This is not the system of government we have and that we fought for," Feingold told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

The president had harsh words for those who talked about the program to the media, saying their actions were illegal and improper.

"As a result, our enemies have learned information they should not have," he said. "The unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk."

I agree! How come his speech tomorrow night can't be about his resignation??? His own party doesn't approve of this egregious use of power.

But, as usual, he is belligerent.

NRNS thank you....excellent article...he has provided not only the unlawful application of this flagrant act, but a sense of the constitutional implications or basis for denouncing it.

I have often wondered, if the Congress does not act responsibly as our agent by proxy in such a matter, then could the public itself demand accountability by a form of 'citizen's arrest.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics...8WwY6vJDDBLqbtg

Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts

Bush administration officials argue that the civil liberties concerns are unfounded, and they say pointedly that the Patriot Act has not freed the N.S.A. to target Americans. "Nothing could be further from the truth," wrote John Yoo, a former official in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, and his co-author in a Wall Street Journal opinion article in December 2003. Mr. Yoo worked on a classified legal opinion on the N.S.A.'s domestic eavesdropping program.

At an April hearing on the Patriot Act renewal, Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, asked Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the F.B.I., "Can the National Security Agency, the great electronic snooper, spy on the American people?"

"Generally," Mr. Mueller said, "I would say generally, they are not allowed to spy or to gather information on American citizens."

President Bush did not ask Congress to include provisions for the N.S.A. domestic surveillance program as part of the Patriot Act and has not sought any other laws to authorize the operation. Bush administration lawyers argued that such new laws were unnecessary, because they believed that the Congressional resolution on the campaign against terrorism provided ample authorization, officials said.

The Legal Line Shifts

Seeking Congressional approval was also viewed as politically risky because the proposal would be certain to face intense opposition on civil liberties grounds. The administration also feared that by publicly disclosing the existence of the operation, its usefulness in tracking terrorists would end, officials said.

The legal opinions that support the N.S.A. operation remain classified, but they appear to have followed private discussions among senior administration lawyers and other officials about the need to pursue aggressive strategies that once may have been seen as crossing a legal line, according to senior officials who participated in the discussions.

For example, just days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and the Pentagon, Mr. Yoo, the Justice Department lawyer, wrote an internal memorandum that argued that the government might use "electronic surveillance techniques and equipment that are more powerful and sophisticated than those available to law enforcement agencies in order to intercept telephonic communications and observe the movement of persons but without obtaining warrants for such uses."

Mr. Yoo noted that while such actions could raise constitutional issues, in the face of devastating terrorist attacks "the government may be justified in taking measures which in less troubled conditions could be seen as infringements of individual liberties."

The next year, Justice Department lawyers disclosed their thinking on the issue of warrantless wiretaps in national security cases in a little-noticed brief in an unrelated court case. In that 2002 brief, the government said that "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."

Administration officials were also encouraged by a November 2002 appeals court decision in an unrelated matter. The decision by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, which sided with the administration in dismantling a bureaucratic "wall" limiting cooperation between prosecutors and intelligence officers, cited "the president's inherent constitutional authority to conduct warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance."

But the same court suggested that national security interests should not be grounds "to jettison the Fourth Amendment requirements" protecting the rights of Americans against undue searches. The dividing line, the court acknowledged, "is a very difficult one to administer."

You don't consider it abusive for a president to assume power that he does not have? You don't consider it abusive for a president to violate the law? He bypassed the FISA Court and authorized warrantless searches (wiretaps). We DO NOT ALLOW warrantless searches in this country. It is against the law.

We need to wake up and stop letting Bush use the fear of terrorists argument to cow us into allowing him to abuse his power.

Here is a quote from the Glen Greenwald article that I posted above:

He's going to use that speech to try to improve his poll numbers by citing the successful Iraqi elections. He is also going to use it to further scare the American people about terrorists that "lurk" among us so that he can get them to support his abuse of power.

My Senators and Reps. will get an angry call from me on Monday morning asking them why they are allowing the president to abuse his power.

I just ran across this action....a proposed citizen's arrest by the people of Texas against Kay Bailey Hutchison....obviously unsuccesful, but I picture a similar declaration:

People of the United States vs George W Bush

Resolved that the "President," George W Bush did willfully, arrogantly, and unlawfully abuse the constitutional powers invested to him by the Constitution and by the American people and subject to congressional law .etc etc etc


http://houston.indymedia.org/news/2002/10/4724.php

Sounds good to me. This HAS to stop !

Where are all the emails I get from various gov't reps on other issues ?
Why are they not screaming with outrage and asking us to sign on in protest ?

I just sent a letter to the editor to my local paper. I hope everyone who reads this thread will send one to their local paper. The response to what Bush has done must be immediate before their spin has a chance to take hold.

Calculated Machinations and Lies

The Madness of King George

How does one sit down to write about the deliberate circumvention of law in a nation of laws by the Chief Executive? Especially, when the actions taken by that executive ignore the lessons that were hard learned and codified into law for the express purpose of preventing the very actions taken?

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (or FISA) provides the framework for how surveillance by covert agencies may or may not be done. The Bush Administration has put forth the argument that FISA had to be circumvented due to immediate need for surveillance of subjects in the aftermath of 9/11 due to urgent national security concerns. But this is a lie.

FISA provisions already provide for emergency surveillance measures. Under 36 USC 1805, the Attorney General may authorize emergency surveillance (including wiretapping and other regulated surveillance methods) for up to 72 hours, so long as application for approval by the FISA supervisory court is made before that time expires. The Administration already had all the emergency measures it needed to do surveillance without illegal encroachment on American civil liberties.

Further, this was a calculated effort to circumvent the law, resting these efforts on a matter of urgent national security -- which was designed to ensure that any opposition would have to occur privately in the interests of the nation. The "Gang of Eight" would have to have been informed of this Presidential directive -- this is the leadership of the House and Senate, and the leadership of the Intelligence committees in both houses -- at the time that the initial directive was put into place.

On John Yoo's recommendation (according to reports here and here), the President issued the first order within a very short framework after 9/11. The Gang of Eight does not have to give unanimous agreement by any means for a Presidential Directive to become effective, there is simply a notification requirement of actions of this nature prior to the order going into effect.

Because there was an ongoing threat of potential sleeper cell activity in this country at the time, any opposition would have to have been maintained behind intelligence walls, simply on the basis of urgent national security interests. The Administration knew that would be the consideration weighed in by all of those members notified, because first and foremost the immediate safety concerns would have been paramount at that time. And they used this to their advantage in this power grab that violates the principles of separation of powers and the prohibition against violation of Fourth Amendment rights.

The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution reads as follows:
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.

The wholesale, willful and deliberate circumvention of this Constitutional principle by the Bush Administration is appalling, not least because it was wholly unnecessary, given the emergency provisions already in place in the FISA laws. (This FindLaw link provides a wealth of information on Fourth Amendment considerations and case law. Very useful.)

The question comes as to what oversight, if any, has been given to this matter after the immediate threat of 9/11 subsided. Why was this circumvention of the FISA law allowed to continue? The recent articles on the subject indicate that there was oppostion by Democrats, particularly by Sen. Rockefeller, but with an Administration and a Congress controlled by Republicans who have made it a policy to shut out the minority and any opposing opinions, how much if any of this got through?

Since the implementation of FISA, the FBI has primarily been responsible for domestic surveillance. The NSA, rather gratefully, retreated to foreign surveillance after the turmoil of the Vietnam era. (And it isn't just the NSA involved, it's also the DoD.)

The Bush Administration has thoughtlessly and needlessly breached that wall and, despite all indications being that the NSA program was very limited in terms of personnel being involved, has tainted the entire operation -- again -- and shined a light on an agency that thrives in the shadows. Which does not help us in terms of national security considerations. (NPR has had a series of reports on this matter, including an particularly exceptional interview with James Bamford which can be found here. Well worth the listen.)

But this is an Administration that appears to think only in short term needs and wants, and not in long term consequences and worst case scenarios. The President acknowledged today that he did, indeed, authorize this domestic surveillance. Reports are that he did so on multiple occasions.

Congressional leaders of both parties have called for hearings on the subject.

They would do well to remember that, in a nation of laws, neither the President nor members of Congress are above the rule of law. And that the nation is watching to see if anyone will be held to account for the machinations and lies of King George. If the Congress does not hold this Administration to account, then the public will do so in the 2006 elections. Period.

Digby, Atrios and Josh Marshall have more.

posted by ReddHedd @ 9:43 AM


http://firedoglake.blogspot.com/

I, too, am not sure it's impeachable but am doubtful that, in a Republican-dominated Congress, much would be done about it unless their constituents insist.
Let's hope at least an honest investigation into the matter is pursued because their constituents insist.

Sincerely,

Jesseaw

Bush: Eavesdropping helps save U.S. lives

WASHINGTON (AP) — Facing angry criticism and challenges to his authority in Congress, President Bush on Saturday unapologetically defended his administration's right to conduct secret post-Sept. 11 spying in the U.S. as "critical to saving American lives."

President Bush delivers his weekly radio address in the Roosevelt Room of the White House.
By Martin Simon-Pool, Getty Images

One Democrat said Bush was acting more like a king than a democratically elected leader.

Bush's willingness to publicly acknowledge some of the government's most classified activities was a stunning development for a president known to dislike disclosure of even the most mundane inner workings of his White House.

Since October 2001, the super-secret National Security Agency has monitored, without court-approved warrants, the international phone calls and e-mails of people inside the United States.

News of the program comes at a particularly damaging and delicate time.

Already, the Bush administration is under fire for allegedly operating secret prisons in Eastern Europe and shipping suspected terrorists to other countries for harsh interrogations.

The NSA program's existence surfaced as the administration and its GOP allies on Capitol Hill were fighting to save the expiring provisions of the USA Patriot Act, the domestic anti-terrorism law enacted after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

In a stinging failure to Bush, Democrats and a few Republicans who say this law gives so much latitude to law enforcement officials that it threatens Americans' constitutional liberties succeeded Friday in stalling its renewal.

So Bush scrapped the version of his weekly radio address that he had already taped — on the recent elections in Iraq — and delivered a live speech from the White House's Roosevelt Room on the Patriot Act and the NSA program.

The gravity with which the White House regarded the situation was evident by the presence in the West Wing on a normally quiet Saturday of many of Bush's closest aides.

Often appearing angry in his eight-minute address, the president lashed out at the senators who blocked the Patriot Act's renewal, branding them as irresponsible.

He also made clear that he has no intention of halting his authorizations of the NSA's monitoring activities and said the public disclosure of the spy operation endangered Americans.

Bush said his authority to approve what he called a "vital tool in our war against the terrorists" came from his constitutional powers as commander in chief. He said that he has personally signed off on reauthorizations more than 30 times since the Sept. 11 attacks.

"The American people expect me to do everything in my power under our laws and Constitution to protect them and their civil liberties," Bush said. "And that is exactly what I will continue to do, so long as I'm the president of the United States."

James Bamford, author of two books on the National Security Agency, said the program could be problematic because it bypasses a special court set up by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to authorize eavesdropping on suspected terrorists.

"I didn't hear him specify any legal right, except his right as president, which in a democracy doesn't make much sense," Bamford said in an interview. "Today, what Bush said is he went around the law, which is a violation of the law — which is illegal."

Susan Low Bloch, a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown University Law Center, said the president needs authorization from Congress for this kind of activity.

"He's taking a hugely expansive interpretation of the Constitution and the president's powers under the Constitution," she said.

"It's consistent with everything the White House has been doing since 9/11. And every time that any of these measures have been challenged in the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court has ruled against the administration. The administration just doesn't seem to learn from that."

That view was echoed by congressional Democrats.

"I tell you, he's President George Bush, not King George Bush. This is not the system of government we have and that we fought for," Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., told The Associated Press.

Added Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.: "The Bush administration seems to believe it is above the law."

Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, on Friday said the NSA program was inappropriate and he promised hearings soon.

Bush defended the monitoring program as narrowly designed and used "consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution." He said it is employed only to intercept the international communications of people inside the U.S. who have been determined to have "a clear link" to al-Qaeda or related terrorist organizations.

Government officials have refused to provide details, including defining the standards used to establish such a link or saying how many people are being monitored.

The program is reviewed every 45 days, using fresh threat assessments, legal reviews, and information from previous activities under the program, the president said. Intelligence officials involved in the monitoring receive extensive training to make sure civil liberties are not violated, he said.

Bush also said members of the congressional leadership have been briefed more than a dozen times on the activities.

The program through the nation's largest spy agency is designed in part to fix problems revealed by the 2001 attacks, in which it came to be learned that two of the suicide hijackers were communicating from San Diego with al-Qaeda operatives overseas.

"The activities I have authorized make it more likely that killers like these 9-11 hijackers will be identified and located in time," Bush said. "The activities conducted under this authorization have helped detect and prevent possible terrorist attacks in the United States and abroad.

The president had harsh words for those who revealed the program to the media, saying they acted improperly and illegally. The surveillance, was first disclosed in Friday's New York Times.

"As a result, our enemies have learned information they should not have," Bush said. "The unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk."

Bush has more to worry about on Capitol Hill than his difficulties with the Patriot Act. Lawmakers have begun challenging Bush on his Iraq policy, reflecting polling that shows half of the country is not behind him on the war.

On Sunday, the president was continuing his effort to reverse that by giving his fifth major speech in less than three weeks on Iraq. This latest one was a 15-minute address, set in prime time from the Oval Office, that was to focus on his vision for Iraq for 2006.

One bright spot for the White House was a new poll showing that a strong majority of Americans oppose, as does Bush and most lawmakers, an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. The AP-Ipsos poll found 57% of those surveyed said the U.S. military should stay until Iraq is stabilized.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

useful quote from blogger at Huffington Post:

Apparently, Bush thinks that 9/11 gave him the authority to do anything he wants, regardless of the law. He's like some renegade sheriff who just rode into some one-horse frontier town and declared, "I am the law".

Some items on this subject from Josh Marshall at TPM:

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/007275.php



http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/007276.php



http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/007277.php



http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/007278.php

From Steve Clemons at The Washington Note, a demand that the list of people spied on be made public.

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001151.html

From Digby at Hullabaloo

If The President Does It It's Not Illegal

by digby

Oh for Gawd's sakes. Tom Brokaw is on Matthews boo-hooing that this NSA story stepped on Junior's wonderful Iraq triumph. He explains that when you are at war you need to do things that are difficult and believes that most people in the country will agree that the administration needed to spy on Americans after 9/11. He agrees with analyst Roger Cressy (who I used to think was sane) that once the "window" of a possible impending attack closed they should have gone up to the hill and sought permission to keep spying on Americans with no judicial oversight. (I haven't heard about this "window" before. Tom and Roger both seem to have a fantasy that the administration would not simply say that the "window" remains open as long as evil exists in the world.)

Look, the problem here, again, is not one of just spying on Americans, as repulsively totalitarian as that is. It's that the administration adopted John Yoo's theory of presidential infallibility. But, of course, it wasn't really John Yoo's theory at all; it was Dick Cheney's muse, Richard Nixon who said, "when the President does it, that means it's not illegal."

This was not some off the cuff statement. It was based upon a serious constitutional theory --- that the congress or the judiciary (and by inference the laws they promulgate and interpret) have no authority over an equal branch of government. The president, in the pursuit of his duties as president, is not subject to the laws. Citizens can offer their judgment of his performance every four years at the ballot box.

After the election, George W. Bush said this:


The Post: ...Why hasn't anyone been held accountable, either through firings or demotions, for what some people see as mistakes or misjudgments?




He, like Nixon, believes that the president has only one "accountability moment" while he is president. His re-election. Beyond that, he has been given a blank check. And that includes breaking the law since if the president does it, it's not illegal, the president being the executive branch which is not subject to any other branch of govenrment.

John Yoo, the former deputy attorney general who wrote many of the opinion undergirding these findings (on torture as well as spying) explains that the congress has no right to abridge the president's warmaking powers. Its only constitutional remedy to a war with which they disagree is to deny funding; they can leave the troops on the field with no food or bullets.

I suspect that there are many more of these instances out there in which the administration has simply ignored the law. They believe that the constitution explicitly authorizes them to do so.


After 9/11 these people went crazy and convinced themselves that the country was in such mortal, exitential danger that this theory of imperial presidential perogative was a necessity. They say they are doing it to protect the citizens of this country. But one thing that American conservatives used to understand was that our system of government was forged by people who understood that too much power invested in one place is dangerous and that sometimes the people needed to be protected from their own government. That's fundamental to our laborious process of checks and balances and a free press. (Indeed, it was that principle on which they based their absolutist stand on the second amendment.)

Now we hear conservative commentators like Ronald Kessler, who was just interviewed (alone) on FoxNews, opining that the president did nothing illegal and was completely within his rights to spy on Americans. There is no longer any question that the government would ever abuse its power by, for instance, spying on Americans for political purposes and even if it did, we're fighting for our lives and we have to accept these infringements for our own safety. I'm quite sure he'll agree that a President Howard Dean should be given the same level of trust, aren't you?

I think the president said it best:



Update:

A commenter to Larry Johnson's post over at TPM (reminding us that John Bolton was involved in some doing about NSA intercepts and American citizens) gives a nice historical view of the Yoo Doctrine:


Re: Spying on Americans and John Bolton (5.00 / 2) (#31)
by JamesW on Dec 16, 2005 -- 06:23:50 PM EST

The second part of the Yoo Doctrine is critical: it's the President, not Congress, who decides whether the country is at war or not.

In an extreme Tory argument, Yoo can just about argue that this was English 18th-century doctrine, but since Parliament rigorously controlled the purse-strings, it surely wasn't practice after 1688. [Yoo does make this argument --- ed] I doubt if English Whigs like Fox accepted the theory either, let alone American rebels.

Where Yoo surely parts company with any sane constitutional thinking since the Roman Republic is the extension that the monarch/president gets to decide what counts as a war. For George III, George Washington, Lincoln. Woodrow Wilson and FDR, war is an organised conflict between societies or social groups. Police actions against pirates, slavers, and terrorists are not war. By treating the rhetorical "war on terror", infinitely redefinable, as a real war with war's legal consequences, the Bush administration has entered the 1984 terrain of totalitarianism

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_12_11_...477714899464334

From Atrios

Saturday, December 17, 2005

Spying on Americans


We need to know who, why, what:


The revelation that the National Security Agency was allowed to conduct non-FISA intercepts of American citizens should bring last summer's hearing on John Bolton's nomination to the United Nations back into focus. As Legal times noted in September of this year, "During the confirmation hearings of John Bolton as the U.S. representative to the United Nations, it came to light that the NSA had freely revealed intercepted conversations of U.S. citizens to Bolton while he served at the State Department. . . . More generally, Newsweek reports that from January 2004 to May 2005, the NSA supplied intercepts and names of 10,000 U.S. citizens to policy-makers at many departments, other U.S. intelligence services, and law enforcement agencies."

We still don't know who he was looking at and what information was contained in those intercepts. More importantly, were they legally obtained? In light of the latest revelation, we have another possible explanation why the Bush Administration fought so strenuously to keep those intercepts secret and out of the hearing. Snooping without judicial review is wrong and must be punished.



There was absolutely no reason to not follow FISA unless they didn't want anyone to know who they were snooping on.

Criminals.

http://www.atrios.blogspot.com/

College student writing a research paper on communism gets a visit from the Feds, for requesting to borrow a copy of Mao's little red book from the library. This one happened right in my own state.

Your tax dollars at work: One nation, under surveillance, without liberty or justice at all.

http://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/12-05...05/a09lo650.htm

Great nrns ! And very clever to pick up on, and include, the word lurking in your letter to the editor. For those who may have missed the post/transcript of Bush's interview on The News Hour last night, he used the word to invoke fear as a justification for his actions.

lurk P Pronunciation Key (lûrk)
intr.v. lurked, lurk·ing, lurks
To lie in wait, as in ambush.
To move furtively; sneak.
To exist unobserved or unsuspected: danger lurking around every bend.

Such a word filled with emotion and oh, so Rovian.
Here's a link to that interview, which nrns posted here last night:


http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...27&#entry458127

"JIM LEHRER: Mr. President, welcome.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Thank you, sir.

JIM LEHRER: First, the New York Times story this morning that says that you authorized secret wiretaps by the National Security Agency of thousands of Americans. Is that true?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Jim, we do not discuss ongoing intelligence operations to protect the country, and the reason why is that there's an enemy that lurks , that would like to know exactly what we're trying to do to stop them." ...

Shrubs Radio address

Snuffy posted this AP article a few posts earlier in this thread. I saw this version in my local paper...it has some different info.

Dec 17, 6:42 PM EST

Bush: Eavesdropping helps save U.S. lives

By JENNIFER LOVEN
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Facing angry criticism and challenges to his authority in Congress, President Bush on Saturday unapologetically defended his administration's right to conduct secret post-Sept. 11 spying in the United States as "critical to saving American lives."

Bush said congressional leaders had been briefed on the operation more than a dozen times. That included Democrats as well as Republicans in the House and Senate, a GOP lawmaker said.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said she had been told on several occasions that Bush had authorized unspecified activities by the National Security Agency, the nation's largest spy agency. She said she had expressed strong concerns at the time, and that Bush's statement Saturday "raises serious questions as to what the activities were and whether the activities were lawful."

Often appearing angry in an eight-minute address, the president made clear he has no intention of halting his authorizations of the monitoring activities and said public disclosure of the program by the news media had endangered Americans.

Bush's willingness to publicly acknowledge a highly classified spying program was a stunning development for a president known to dislike disclosure of even the most mundane inner workings of his White House. Just a day earlier he had refused to talk about it.

Since October 2001, the super-secret National Security Agency has eavesdropped on the international phone calls and e-mails of people inside the United States without court-approved warrants. Bush said steps like these would help fight terrorists like those who involved in the Sept. 11 plot.

"The activities I have authorized make it more likely that killers like these 9/11 hijackers will be identified and located in time," Bush said. "And the activities conducted under this authorization have helped detect and prevent possible terrorist attacks in the United States and abroad."

News of the program came at a particularly damaging and delicate time.

Bush says the news media should not have revealed the program's existence.

AP VIDEO

Bush Approved Eavesdropping, Official Says

Interactives
Poll: Bush Administration Ethics Questioned
Bush's Cabinet




President Bush



Already, the administration was under fire for allegedly operating secret prisons in Eastern Europe and shipping suspected terrorists to other countries for harsh interrogations.

The NSA program's existence surfaced as Bush was fighting to save the expiring provisions of the USA Patriot Act, the domestic anti-terrorism law enacted after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Democrats and a few Republicans who say the law gives so much latitude to law enforcement officials that it threatens Americans' constitutional liberties succeeded Friday in stalling its renewal.

So Bush scrapped the version of his weekly radio address that he had already taped - on the recent elections in Iraq - and delivered a live speech from the Roosevelt Room in which he lashed out at the senators blocking the Patriot Act as irresponsible and confirmed the NSA program.

Bush said his authority to approve what he called a "vital tool in our war against the terrorists" came from his constitutional powers as commander in chief. He said that he has personally signed off on reauthorizations more than 30 times.

"The American people expect me to do everything in my power under our laws and Constitution to protect them and their civil liberties," Bush said. "And that is exactly what I will continue to do, so long as I'm the president of the United States."

James Bamford, author of two books on the NSA, said the program could be problematic because it bypasses a special court set up by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to authorize eavesdropping on suspected terrorists.

"I didn't hear him specify any legal right, except his right as president, which in a democracy doesn't make much sense," Bamford said in an interview. "Today, what Bush said is he went around the law, which is a violation of the law - which is illegal."

Retired Adm. Bobby Inman, who led the NSA from 1977 to 1981, said Bush's authorization of the eavesdropping would have been justified in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks "because at that point you couldn't get a court warrant unless you could show probable cause."

"Once the Patriot Act was in place, I am puzzled what was the need to continue outside the court," Inman added. But he said, "If the fact is valid that Congress was notified, there will be no consequences."

Susan Low Bloch, a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown University Law Center, said Bush was "taking a hugely expansive interpretation of the Constitution and the president's powers under the Constitution.

That view was echoed by congressional Democrats.

"I tell you, he's President George Bush, not King George Bush. This is not the system of government we have and that we fought for," Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., told The Associated Press.

Added Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.: "The Bush administration seems to believe it is above the law."

Bush defended the program as narrowly designed and used "consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution." He said it is employed only to intercept the international communications of people inside the U.S. who have been determined to have "a clear link" to al-Qaida or related terrorist organizations.

Government officials have refused to provide details, including defining the standards used to establish such a link or saying how many people are being monitored.

The program is reviewed every 45 days, using fresh threat assessments, legal reviews, and information from previous activities under the program, the president said. Intelligence officials involved in the monitoring receive extensive training in civil liberties, he said.

Bush said leaders in Congress have been briefed more than a dozen times. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., told House Republicans that those informed were the top Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate and of each chamber's intelligence committees. "They've been through the whole thing," Hoekstra said.

The president had harsh words for those who revealed the program to the media, saying they acted improperly and illegally. The surveillance was first disclosed in Friday's New York Times.

"As a result, our enemies have learned information they should not have," Bush said. "The unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk."

Bush has more to worry about on Capitol Hill than his difficulties with the Patriot Act. Lawmakers have begun challenging Bush on his Iraq policy, reflecting polling that shows half of the country is not behind him on the war.

On Sunday, the president was continuing his effort to reverse that by giving his fifth major speech in less than three weeks on Iraq.

One bright spot for the White House was a new poll showing that a strong majority of Americans oppose, as does Bush and most lawmakers, an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. The AP-Ipsos poll found 57 percent of those surveyed said the U.S. military should stay until Iraq is stabilized.

---

Associated Press Special Correspondent David Espo and writers Andrew Bridges and Will Lester contributed to this report.

Time for a full scale investigation into EXACTLY who was being spied upon.

My bet is that the spying wasn't on potential threats to national security / public safety / terrorism... but rather those critical of the administration.... like us.

It doesn't matter though... it is unconstitutional.

Oh, hell, I forgot... the first act of the $0B was to flush the Constitution down the toilet... using 911 as an excuse.

Ben Franklin said it best... (See my signature quotes).

Now IMPEACH THE BASTARD.

Anthony Wade from Op ED

December 17, 2005

The Coronation of King George

By Anthony Wade

December 17, 2005

It became official today; President Bush named himself King of the United States. Granted those of us who follow this administration have seen Bush act as if he was a king and not an elected representative for the past five years but finally today Bush all but came out and said it.

The issue at hand is the wiretapping of US citizens without judicial oversight. In this country that is a felony and an impeachable offense. Essentially, the president does not have absolute power in this country. He is but one part of the government and is supposed to be “checked” and “balanced” by the other branches of government. In the Bush administration however, the other two branches are merely subservient to the omnipotent King George.

In order for the president to wiretap an American citizen he must obtain permission from the courts. In order to gain that permission he must prove to the courts that there is probable cause for such activities. There needs to be a justifiable reason for invading the privacy of the citizen. If the courts agree, then they grant the wiretap. In these instances, Bush bypassed the courts, never established probable cause, and “authorized” the wiretaps himself, making them illegal.

While the blogs have been reporting on such activities for over a year it took until recently for the mainstream media to catch up and when the truth finally came to light this week America huddled together to hear the president explain himself. Instead Bush took to the air waves today to say that not only did he do this, but he will continue to do so, thumbing his nose at the courts, checks and balances, and the Constitution of the Untied States of America. Bush actually was more upset that it was reported, claiming phantom damage done to their war on terror. Mind you they have yet to prosecute ONE person successfully since the onset of this “war.” So to sum up, the president violates federal law; illegally spies on the citizens he is sworn to protect, and then is angry that someone would expose it. Gotta love King George.

One telling quote from Bush today was:

"We don't talk about sources and methods. Don't talk about ongoing intelligence operations. I know there's speculation. But it's important for the American people to understand that we will do - or I will use my powers to protect us, and I will do so under the law, and that's important for our citizens to understand."

Essentially Bush is saying trust me. Sorry George we don’t. It is quite obvious that he is reluctant to discuss “sources and methods” because that would reveal the scope of the federal violations he has sponsored. While it is noble for the president to want to “use his powers” to protect us, it is ILLEGAL for him to determine what those powers are. It is ILLEGAL to rewrite the constitution and assume broader powers circumventing the checks and balances system set up by our founding fathers. What is important for American citizens to understand is that our president does not operate “under the law” but rather seems to believe he is above the law.

The catch phrases you will hear over the ensuing days is that Bush operated within the law, but the part they omit is that Bush decides what the law is, which ones he will follow and which ones he thinks fall under his “powers” to override. If you want to go to war, simply lie to Congress about the intel you have collected. If someone challenges your lies, attack him personally and out his secret agent wife. If you want to hold someone indefinitely, call him an enemy combatant. For whatever annoying law there is, simply create a fake “power” that you can then grant yourself and blame it all on living in a terrorist-post-911 world. If you want to violate the civil rights of citizens, simply don’t inform the courts that you authorized illegal wiretaps. This is all standard in the arrogant Bush administration that treats its citizens as children, who are guilty until the illegal wiretap proves them innocent.

The truly shocking thing today was the brazen admittance by King George. A few years ago he would have denied the story or sent out his emissaries to attack the credibility of any of the sources. Instead today he went on the air and told America that he no longer is bound by the Constitution and that the system of checks and balances which has served our country well for over 200 years has been rendered quaint. He took up the crown he has hid for the past five years, crafted with lies, corruption and war and placed it firmly upon his head. He declared himself to no longer be president but King of the United States, no longer answerable to law, courts, or any of the other branches of government. People within his own party were aghast at these revelations and have promised to investigate but they sound like court jesters before the mighty, omnipotent, King George.

Wake up America; it is time to throw the tea in the harbor again.



http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_an...ation_of_ki.htm



And David Sirota OP-ED

December 17, 2005

How the media "authorize" the abuse of government power

By David Sirota

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 by an out-of-control president. But it is also a story of how today's major media behave with near total deference to power and its own profit motive. What we are watching, even in the seemingly small details of the coverage, is no less than the media's complicity in helping estsablish a quasi-legal framework for what was a clearly illegal abuse of government power. It is in the clearest sense the media being used as tools of state power in overriding the very laws that are supposed to confine state power.

You might be thinking, "How is that possible? Didn't the New York Times print the story exposing the surveillance program, and doesn't that show the media challenges power?"

Well, not really, when you consider that the Times actually held the story for a year. As the Washington Post reports, the Times' essentially held the story because of exactly what I said: deference to power, and its own bottom line. First, deference: the Times editors now tell us they held the story because the White House told them to. Then, profit: we learn that what changed between now and a year ago was that a Times reporter, James Risen, is about to publish a book about the entire affair and thus publishing the story now will mean maximum pre-sale buzz in January when the book is released - a key for any big book sales.

But even more interesting than these big embarrassing clues about the media's motives are the very small ones. Notice, for instance, that in describing the President's clearly illegal behavior, the media are parroting the White House's terminology - terminology specifically crafted to make it sound as if Bush was operating on quasi-legal grounds.

So for instance, the Times tells us Bush "secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans." The paper also refers to "the powers granted the N.S.A. by President Bush." "Authorized" and "granted." The word "authorize" is defined as "to grant power or authority to," and the word "grant" is the act of giving something one has. The media's use of these terms, then, is the media trying to make the public assume as fact that Bush actually had the power or authority to grant in the first place.

In fact, only until the very end of the Times piece do we get a glimpse that the White House actually knew it didn't have the power or authority to grant, when the Times reports "President Bush did not ask Congress to include provisions for the N.S.A. domestic surveillance program as part of the Patriot Act and has not sought any other laws to authorize the operation." Why? Not because the White House thought a domestic surveillance operation was legal. But because "the proposal would be certain to face intense opposition on civil liberties grounds." They knew it wasn't legal, and they knew it wouldn't be made legal by Congress, but they went ahead and did it anyway. And yet as if playing a role in an Orwell novel, the media is still using terms that imply the President had every legal right to do it in the first place.

Sadly, other major media seem to be parroting this nonsense. The Associated Press, for example, reports that "President Bush said Saturday he has no intention of stopping his personal authorizations of a post-Sept. 11 secret eavesdropping program in the U.S." That's right: "his personal authorizations," as if he can just go around "authorizing" whatever he wants without regard to the fact that such powers are not his to authorize.

But then, we've seen this before. In a famous 1977 interview, Richard Nixon said "When the president does it that means that it is not illegal." At that time, we were lucky Nixon was long out of office and thus unable to turn that contempt for the law into presidential directives. Today, it is different - we clearly have a president with the same attitude, but a president who is still very much in a position to forge that attitude into government policy. And most disturbing of all, we have a media that, because of protive motives and fear of power, are more than happy to help that president publicly justify his disregard for the rule of law.


http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_da...ia__22autho.htm

Yeah, I bet he will say that Congress had the same information just like he did about the pre-war intelligence. But, you don't go to Congress to get authority for specific wiretaps, you go to the Courts. By the way, I also didn't see Congress pass any laws that said that Bush could sidestep the Courts.

Do you have a url for this. I can't click on your link. Thanks.

http://movies.crooksandliars.com/Confession2.mov
or just go to
http://movies.crooksandliars.com/

oops!
the "just go to" link is forbidden!
go here instead!
http://www.crooksandliars.com/

More from Josh Marshall on FISA:

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/007280.php

A long time ago, when I said Bushie was well on the way to a total dictatorship ala Hitler style, I was shouted down. Now, the truth is slowly showing up.

Good find of FISA Court.

This is all such a freak out. I am getting numb - when will the house of cards fall ?
When will enough people care if it does or not ?

I think we need more communication from the military in order to know how far we have come since 9/11 to gage where we should be on National Security right now. They should be signaling to the President when we return to a more normal state. I am not sure we are ever going live as openly as we did before all of this happened.

The only reason I am not more angry about the spying is because we are judging this action now rather than four years ago after 9/11. I really don't agree with domestic spying, but I can understand why he did it under the circumstances surrounding the attacks.

President Acknowledges Approving Secretive Eavesdropping

By Peter Baker

President Bush said today that he secretly ordered the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans with suspected ties to terrorists because it was "critical to saving American lives" and "consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution."

Bush said the program has been reviewed regularly by the nation's top legal authorities and targets only those people with "a clear link to these terrorist networks." Noting the failures to detect hijackers already in the country before the strikes on New York and Washington, Bush said the NSA's domestic spying since then has helped thwart other attacks.

In his statement, delivered during a live and unusually long radio address, the president assailed the news media for disclosing the eavesdropping program, and rebuked Senate Democrats for blocking renewal of the USA Patriot Act, which gave the FBI greater surveillance power after 9/11 and which expires Dec. 31.

"The terrorist threat to our country will not expire in two weeks," said Bush, calling a filibuster by Democratic senators opposed to the Patriot Act "irresponsible."

The speech represented a turnaround for a White House that initially refused to discuss the highly classified NSA effort even after it was revealed in news accounts. Advisers said Bush decided to confirm the program's existence -- and combine that with a demand for reauthorization of the Patriot Act -- to put critics on the defensive by framing it as a matter of national security, not civil liberties.

The NSA "authorization is a vital tool in our war against the terrorists," Bush said. "It is critical to saving American lives. The American people expect me to do everything in my power under our laws and Constitution to protect them and their civil liberties. And that is exactly what I will continue to do, so long as I'm the president of the United States."

Congressional Democrats and some Republicans have expressed outrage at the NSA program, saying it contradicts long-standing restrictions on domestic spying and subverts constitutional guarantees against unwarranted invasions of privacy.

Some of them were further incensed by Bush's remarks today. "The president believes that he has the power to override the laws that Congress has passed," Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) said. "He is a president, not a king." Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said the administration "seems to believe it is above the law."

Rep. Dan Burton (Ind.) was among Republicans responding. "The liberal media and its liberal allies are attacking the president" for spying tactics that are legitimate and legal, he said on the House floor today afternoon. "The fact is, the president is defending the United States of America."

The order signed by Bush, reported by the New York Times on Thursday, empowered the NSA to monitor international telephone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens and residents without the warrant normally required by a secret foreign intelligence court.

A high-ranking intelligence official said today that the presidential directive was first issued in October 2001, not in 2002, as other sources have told the Times and The Washington Post. And today Bush said his directive came "weeks" after 9/11. The high-ranking official would not say whether the authority was changed or broadened significantly in 2002 or later during regular reviews.

Hundreds and perhaps thousands of people have been subjected to the surveillance, according to government officials. Officials have privately credited the eavesdropping with the apprehension of Iyman Faris, a truck driver who pleaded guilty in 2003 to planning to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge. Bush said other plots have been disrupted as well.

"The activities I have authorized make it more likely that killers like these 9/11 hijackers will be identified and located in time," he said.

Bush said the program is reviewed every 45 days by the attorney general and White House counsel and that he must then reauthorize it to keep it active. He said he has reauthorized it more than 30 times "and I intend to do so for as long as our nation faces a continuing threat from al Qaeda and related groups."

The president also said the administration has briefed key members of Congress on the program a dozen times. Classified programs are typically disclosed to the chairmen and ranking minority members of the House and Senate intelligence committees.

Bush justified his order on his presidential powers as commander in chief as well as his interpretation of the congressional resolution authorizing him to use force in response to the Sept. 11 attacks, passed just days after the World Trade Center and Pentagon were hit. But Bush did not explain his constitutional thinking, nor how the 2001 resolution gave him the authority to order domestic spying. He took no questions and aides would not discuss the legal issues surrounding the program.

The NSA surveillance is the latest chapter in a growing political struggle over the contours of the administration's tactics against terrorism. Two days ago, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) forced Bush to accept a new law explicitly outlawing the use of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners. Several senators are pressing the administration to provide information on secret CIA detention facilities overseas. And the debate over the Patriot Act centers on how far law enforcement can go in trying to find terror plots.

The president criticized the media for reporting on the NSA surveillance as well as the officials who "improperly" provided the information. "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 said.

The White House decision to confirm the program was an extraordinary move by an administration that almost never publicly discusses such classified methods adopted in its battle against terrorism. The administration, for instance, has never publicly discussed the existence of secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe even after they were reported in The Post.

But in this case, with the Patriot Act renewal on the line, the president's advisers calculated that they should go on the offensive. "This directly takes on the Democrats and puts them in a box -- support our efforts to protect Americans or defend positions that put our nation's security at greater risk," said a senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss political strategy. "We are confident most Americans support the president's actions."

Bush's confirmation of the NSA order, on the other hand, could embolden congressional critics to explore the extent of the program.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) has already called such surveillance "inappropriate" and vowed to conduct hearings. It may prove harder for the administration to withhold information now that the president has publicly acknowledged its existence.

Staff writers Chuck Babington and Barton Gellman contributed to this report.


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On Hill, Anger and Calls for Hearings Greet News of Stateside Surveillance

By Dan Eggen and Charles Lane

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.

Bush declined to discuss the domestic eavesdropping program in a television interview, but he joined his aides in saying that the government acted lawfully and did not intrude on citizens' rights.

"Decisions made are made understanding we have an obligation to protect the civil liberties of the American people," Bush said on "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer."

Disclosure of the NSA plan had an immediate effect on Capitol Hill, where Democratic senators and a handful of Republicans derailed a bill that would renew expiring portions of the USA Patriot Act anti-terrorism law. Opponents repeatedly cited the previously unknown NSA program as an example of the kinds of government abuses that concerned them, while the GOP chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said he would hold oversight hearings on the issue.

"There is no doubt that this is inappropriate," said Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who favored the Patriot Act renewal but said the NSA issue provided valuable ammunition for its opponents.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a member of the intelligence and judiciary committees, called the program "the most significant thing I have heard in my 12 years" in the Senate and suggested that the president may have broken the law by authorizing surveillance without proper warrants.

"How can I go out, how can any member of this body go out, and say that under the Patriot Act we protect the rights of American citizens if, in fact, the president is not going to be bound by the law?" she asked.

Officials across the government yesterday declined to publicly acknowledge the presidential order. But they defended, in general terms, the administration's aggressive strategies in attempting to combat terrorism since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and said that all programs have been lawful and protective of individual rights.

"Let me just say that winning the war on terror requires winning the war of information," Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales told reporters. ". . . And so we will be aggressive in obtaining that information, but we will always do so in a manner that's consistent with our legal obligations."

Government officials credited the new program with helping to uncover and disrupt terrorist plots, including plans by Iyman Faris, an Ohio truck driver who pleaded guilty in 2003 to planning to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge. Faris's attorney, David B. Smith, said he and his client were never informed about the NSA surveillance and had presumed that the monitoring of his cell phone had been authorized by a court-issued warrant.

The existence of the NSA domestic surveillance program was reported late Thursday by the New York Times and confirmed by U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials.

The Washington Post, citing an informed U.S. official, reported that the NSA's warrantless monitoring of U.S. subjects began before Bush's order was issued in early 2002 and included electronic and physical surveillance carried out by other military intelligence agencies assigned to the task.

Since the intelligence reforms of the 1970s, the NSA has adhered to tight restrictions on its activities in the United States and has devoted its efforts almost exclusively to obtaining intelligence overseas. Domestic spying, much of which is handled by the FBI, is governed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and overseen by a special and highly secretive court that meets at Justice Department headquarters in Washington.

The order issued by Bush in 2002, however, allowed the NSA to monitor without a warrant international telephone calls, e-mails and other communications between people in the United States and those overseas. The Associated Press reported last night that Bush reauthorized the order 36 times.

A government official familiar with the NSA order said the president urged that the change be explained to only a very limited group of people on a "need-to-know" basis. That meant that, for nearly four years, only two people in the judicial branch of the U.S. government knew about the warrantless searches: U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, who presided over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court at the time of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and rotated off the court in May 2002, and U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who succeeded him.

The official said that then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and top officials in the Justice Department's Office of Intelligence Policy and Review first briefed a few key officials on the plans to change the 25-year prohibition on most domestic surveillance. In a series of meetings, officials also answered Lamberth's questions about what some informally called "the president's program," and they asserted that no information gained through warrantless surveillance would be used to gain the court's authorization for secret wiretaps and warrants.

Under the president's plan, only the presiding judge of the secret court was allowed to hear cases in which warrantless surveillance may have played a role, the government official said.

Lamberth and Kollar-Kotelly declined to comment yesterday. According to the government source, both raised questions about whether the program was constitutional but neither suggested they had a basis for asserting that Bush did not have the authority he claimed. They focused, instead, on the integrity of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

Lamberth had previously expressed grave doubts about the White House's post-Sept. 11 interest in mixing the investigative powers of intelligence agents with those of criminal detectives and prosecutors. A showdown over the issue resulted in the only decision ever issued by the secret court's appellate panel, which ruled against Lamberth and said the president had broad powers to authorize eavesdropping to fight terrorism.

After Kollar-Kotelly became presiding FISA judge in 2002, she became concerned in the course of one case that warrantless eavesdropping in the NSA collection program could be used to develop information to be presented in the FISA court, the government source said. There appeared to be no evidence that it had happened, only an indication that it could.

As a result of her complaint to the Justice Department, an intelligence source said, the department agreed to have high-ranking officials certify -- under threat of perjury -- that information presented to the FISA court was totally independent of any information gleaned in warrantless surveillance. The New York Times reported that the NSA program was stalled while this debate took place.

The NSA program highlights an ongoing and often tense legal debate over the boundaries of presidential power. John Yoo, the former Justice Department lawyer whose legal opinion helped support the creation of the NSA surveillance program, was also instrumental in the preparation of other memos that argued that Bush had nearly unfettered authority in areas related to the war on terrorism.

Former CIA general counsel Jeffrey H. Smith said he was "not shocked" by the program or the legal arguments underpinning it, because "the theory or the belief that the president had this constitutional power has been around for a long time."

But Smith also said: "These programs always have a way of being abused, of expanding beyond the purpose for which they were created. If the president believed it, he could have gotten authority to do it in the Patriot Act. By avoiding that course, in so doing, he may ultimately wind up eroding the very power he seeks to assert."

Some prominent Republicans defended the surveillance, arguing it was necessary to combat terrorism. "I don't agree with the libertarians," said Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.). "I want my security first. I'll deal with all the details after that."

Staff writers Carol D. Leonnig, Barton Gellman and R. Jeffrey Smith and researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.




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At the Times, a Scoop Deferred

By Paul Farhi

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."

The Times said it agreed to remove information that administration officials said could be "useful" to terrorists and delayed publication for a year "to conduct additional reporting."

The paper offered no explanation to its readers about what had changed in the past year to warrant publication. It also did not disclose that the information is included in a forthcoming book, "State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration," written by James Risen, the lead reporter on yesterday's story. The book will be published in mid-January, according to its publisher, Simon & Schuster.

The decision to withhold the article caused some friction within the Times' Washington bureau, according to people close to the paper. Some reporters and editors in New York and in the bureau, including Risen and co-writer Eric Lichtblau, had pushed for earlier publication, according to these people. One described the story's path to publication as difficult, with much discussion about whether it could have been published earlier.

In a statement yesterday, Times Executive Editor Bill Keller did not mention the book. He wrote that when the Times became aware that the NSA was conducting domestic wiretaps without warrants, "the Administration argued strongly that writing about this eavesdropping program would give terrorists clues about the vulnerability of their communications and would deprive the government of an effective tool for the protection of the country's security."

"Officials also assured senior editors of the Times that a variety of legal checks had been imposed that satisfied everyone involved that the program raised no legal questions," Keller continued. "As we have done before in rare instances when faced with a convincing national security argument, we agreed not to publish at that time."

In the ensuing months, Keller wrote, two things changed the paper's thinking. The paper developed a fuller picture of misgivings about the program by some in the government. And the paper satisfied itself through more reporting that it could write the story without exposing "any intelligence-gathering methods or capabilities that are not already on the public record."

Tom Rosenstiel, executive director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, said it was conceivable the Times waited to publish its NSA story as the Senate took up renewal of the Patriot Act. "It's not unheard of to wait for a news peg," he said. "It's not unusual to discover the existence of something and not know the context of it until later."

Yesterday's article was a dramatic scoop for a newspaper whose national security coverage has been marked by some turmoil in recent years. The Times admitted last year that much of its reporting on Iraq's weapons programs before the war was flawed. The principal author of those stories, Judith Miller, later spent 85 days in jail to protect the identity of an administration source in the CIA leak case.

More recently, the Times has been scooped by the Los Angeles Times on a story that the U.S. military has been secretly paying to run favorable stories in the Iraqi media, and by The Washington Post on the revelation last month of a secret network of CIA prisons for terrorism suspects in foreign countries. The Times announced last week that it was replacing its deputy bureau chief in Washington, which outsiders read as a sign of the paper's dissatisfaction with its Washington coverage.

The Post was in contact with senior administration officials before publication last month of its story on the CIA prisons. But officials did not seek to stop publication of the article, only to remove information that could jeopardize national security, said Leonard Downie Jr., The Post's executive editor.

The story said the officials argued that the disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts in those countries and could make them targets of terrorist retaliation. The Post honored one request by not publishing the Eastern European countries that permitted the prisons.


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Bush's Fumbles Spur New Talk of Oversight on Hill

By Dana Milbank

After a series of embarrassing disclosures, Congress is reconsidering its relatively lenient oversight of the Bush administration.

Lawmakers have been caught by surprise by several recent reports, including the existence of secret U.S. prisons abroad, the CIA's detention overseas of innocent foreign nationals, and, last week, the discovery that the military has been engaged in domestic spying. After five years in which the GOP-controlled House and Senate undertook few investigations into the administration's activities, the legislative branch has begun to complain about being in the dark.

On Friday, after learning that the National Security Agency was eavesdropping on conversations in the United States, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said that the activity was "wrong and it can't be condoned at all," and that his committee "can undertake oversight on it."

That same day, the House approved a resolution that would direct the administration to provide House and Senate intelligence committees with classified reports on the secret U.S. prisons overseas.

Democrats have long complained about a dearth of congressional investigations into Bush administration activities, but their criticism has been gaining validation from others after the botched response to Hurricane Katrina, problems in Iraq and ethical lapses.

Lawrence B. Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, said this fall that "the people's representatives over on the Hill in that other branch of government have truly abandoned their oversight responsibilities [on national security] and have let things atrophy to the point that if we don't do something about it, it's going to get even more dangerous than it already is."

In an interview last week, Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, said "it's a fair comment" that the GOP-controlled Congress has done insufficient oversight and "ought to be" doing more.

"Republican Congresses tend to overinvestigate Democratic administrations and underinvestigate their own," said Davis, who added that he has tried to pick up some of the slack with his committee. "I get concerned we lose our separation of powers when one party controls both branches."

Democrats on the committee said the panel issued 1,052 subpoenas to probe alleged misconduct by the Clinton administration and the Democratic Party between 1997 and 2002, at a cost of more than $35 million. By contrast, the committee under Davis has issued three subpoenas to the Bush administration, two to the Energy Department over nuclear waste disposal at Yucca Mountain, and one last week to the Defense Department over Katrina documents.

Some experts on Congress say that the legislative branch has shed much of its oversight authority because of a combination of aggressive actions by the Bush administration, acquiescence by congressional leaders, and political demands that keep lawmakers out of Washington more than before.

"I do not think you can argue today that Congress is a coequal branch of government; it is not," said Lee H. Hamilton, president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman and vice chairman of the Sept. 11 commission, told reporters this month: "It has basically lost the war-making power. The real debates on budget occur not in Congress but in the Office of Management and Budget. . . . When you come into session Tuesday afternoon and leave Thursday afternoon, you simply do not have time for oversight or deliberation."

Last week, Democrats in the House denounced their GOP counterparts for failing to pursue investigations. Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, criticized Chairman Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) for his handling of an inquiry into former committee member Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.), who resigned after acknowledging he took bribes. Hoekstra's decision to proceed with existing committee staff without the House counsel or inspector general "threatens to compromise our ability to conduct a thorough, expeditious and bipartisan investigation," she said.

Democrats demanded that Davis, who heads the select committee investigating the Katrina response, issue subpoenas to get e-mails and communications of White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. and three other White House officials. "Congress will never understand why the federal response failed unless we obtain access to the e-mails and communications of Andrew Card and other senior White House officials," committee Democrats wrote Davis.

Last month, House Democrats tried to pass a measure criticizing the GOP for a "refusal to conduct oversight" of the Iraq war. In the Senate, Democrats forced the chamber into a closed session to embarrass Republicans for foot-dragging on an inquiry into the alleged manipulation of Iraq intelligence.

"The House has absolutely zero oversight. They just don't engage in that," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) said in an interview last week.

Specifically, Democrats list 14 areas where the GOP majority has "failed to investigate" the administration, including the role of senior officials in the abuse of detainees; leaking the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame; the role of Vice President Cheney's office in awarding contracts to Cheney's former employer, Halliburton; the White House's withholding from Congress the cost of a Medicare prescription drug plan; the administration's relationship with Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi; and the influence of corporate interests on energy policy, environmental regulation and tobacco policy.

Meanwhile, the House ethics committee has not opened a new case or launched an investigation in the past 12 months, despite outside investigations involving, among others, Cunningham and former lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

In most cases, Republicans have said that Democrats are motivated by partisanship rather than fact-finding. After Democrats forced the closed Senate session last month over the slow pace of the inquiry into alleged manipulation of Iraq intelligence, Majority Leader Bill Frist (Tenn.) railed: "They have no conviction. They have no principles. They have no ideas. This is a pure stunt."

Among the most visible oversight battles is Davis's Katrina inquiry, which most Democrats have boycotted as a "sham." Davis said he would "bet my reputation" that the committee will disprove doubts.

At times, Davis has been irritated by administration intransigence. At a hearing last month, he condemned the "lack of production of documents from various executive branch offices" and warned: "We're not going to be stonewalled here."

Democrats, who have tried to get Davis to subpoena the White House for Katrina documents, are not impressed. "Republicans have made a mockery of oversight," said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.), the committee's ranking Democrat. "There was nothing too small to be investigated in the Clinton administration and there's nothing so big that it can't be ignored in the Bush administration."

Davis said his reluctance to issue a subpoena is practical. The select committee faces a Feb. 15 deadline, and a subpoena -- even if approved, as required, by the entire House -- would be tied up in court by the administration until the committee's writ had expired. Issuing a subpoena would do nothing "except embarrass" the White House -- which Davis has not ruled out doing. "As of right now, I'm not satisfied" with White House cooperation, he said.

Davis said his Government Reform Committee has investigated the administration's handling of bioterrorism defenses and preparing for avian influenza and held four hearings on Halliburton's contracts -- after the House Armed Services Committee refused to do so. Similarly, Davis called hearings on the administration's policy on mad cow disease after Agriculture Committee Chairman Robert W. Goodlatte (R-Va.) declined.

"They said it would embarrass the administration," Davis said.


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Sen. Accuses Times of Endangering U.S. 1 hour, 52 minutes ago



A Republican senator on Saturday accused The New York Times of endangering American security to sell a book by waiting until the day of the terror-fighting Patriot Act reauthorization to report that the government has eavesdropped on people without court-approved warrants.

"At least two senators that I heard with my own ears cited this as a reason why they decided to vote to not allow a bipartisan majority to reauthorize the Patriot Act," said Republican Sen. John Cornyn (news, bio, voting record) of Texas. "Well, as it turns out the author of this article turned in a book three months ago and the paper, The New York Times, failed to reveal that the urgent story was tied to a book release and its sale by its author."

Cornyn did not name the senators in his remarks on the Senate floor.

A call to The New York Times' Washington bureau was referred to spokeswoman Catherine Mathis, who could not be reached immediately.

Times reporter James Risen, who wrote the story, has a book "State of WAR: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration," coming out in the next few weeks, Cornyn said.

"I think it's a crying shame ... that we find that America's safety is endangered by the potential expiration of the Patriot Act in part because a newspaper has seen fit to release on the night before the vote on the floor on the reauthorization of the Patriot Act as part of a marketing campaign for selling a book," Cornyn said.

Since October 2001, the super-secret National Security Agency has, without court-approved warrants, eavesdropped on the international phone calls and e-mails of people inside the United States. President Bush said Saturday that the White House had kept the congressional leadership informed, which a Republican lawmaker confirmed.

But several senators cited the NSA revelation as a reason to uphold a filibuster on the renewal of the expiring portions of the USA Patriot Act — the domestic anti-terrorism law enacted after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — without getting additional safeguards into the law. Supporters of renewing the law failed to get 60 votes needed to break the filibuster.

Bush on Saturday also attacked the disclosure. "As a result, our enemies have learned information they should not have," Bush said in his weekly radio address. "The unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk."




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Are you suggesting that you think someone should break in my house and go through my belongings in order to proove the point that the President shouldn't have asked the NSA to eavesdrop on potential terrorists conversation's after 9/11 ? That doesn't make any sense.

Maybe you should calm down a little bit.

There are definetly serious implications to what he did, but it was a reaction to an attack that he felt was necessary to protect us. I don't particularly like it, and it doesn't make me feel like my rights are being respected. However, I can understand that under the circumstances surrounding 9/11, the fact that our defense systems were obviously compromised , and our intelligence had failed, he did what he had to do. It isn't the most popular decision, but have we had any more attacks since then? No.

Look, I am angry about the economy, the four lay offs I have been through, and on and on. But, I am not about to sit here and act like I am the only person in the world that has been through tough times, for whatever reason, because I am not. I am not going to sit and blame the NSA, the President, and domestic spying for anything bad that has happened to me either. If you want to that 's fine, but it doesn't make Bush my President, or me a communist.

There are separate issues going on within many different parts of our country. We have economic problems because of a crappy economic system that this government has pushed on everyone - that's huge. We have social problems because many of our leaders don't care about anyone but themselves, and ignore our constitution half of the time - that is more than obvious. We also have many people that are angry as all hell because they have been through hell and want to take it out on somebody, so we have distrust being directed at the President over the one thing that he just may have gotten right.

I am understanding of Bush's decision but it doesn't mean that I am anything else that you stated. Why should I back down from what I think, just because somebody who doesn't like the President might not understand? My biggest concern is this country, our safety, and our way of life. I am not changing my idea of what I believe to be right or wrong over an administration that has clearly made many mistakes and has been weak as far as protecting The American Way. I call it how I see it and I don't let someone's personality and/or lack of integrity alter my perception of what I know keeps us safe.