http://rawstory.com/other/justicerawstory.pdf

Legal Authorities Supporting the Activities of the National Security Agency Described by the President.

January 20, 2006
U.S. Officials Cite Legal Rationale on Spying Effort
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
and JAMES RISEN
WASHINGTON, Jan. 19 - The Bush administration offered its fullest defense to date Thursday of the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program, saying that authorization from Congress to deter terrorist attacks "places the president at the zenith of his powers in authorizing the N.S.A. activities."

In a 42-page legal analysis, the Justice Department cited the Constitution, the Federalist Papers, the writings of presidents both Republican and Democratic, and dozens of scholarly papers and court cases in justifying President Bush's power to order the N.S.A. surveillance program.

With the legality of the program under public attack since its disclosure last month, officials said Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales ordered up the analysis partly in response to what administration lawyers felt were unfair conclusions in a Jan. 6 report by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. The Congressional report challenged virtually all the main legal justifications the administration had cited for the program.

Vice President Dick Cheney, meanwhile, once again defended the N.S.A. eavesdropping operation in a speech Thursday as "critical to the national security of the United States," even as House Democrats prepared to hold an unofficial hearing on Friday into a program that they charge is illegal and unconstitutional. Mr. Cheney is also scheduled to meet with Congressional leaders on Friday at a separate, closed-door briefing on the program.

When the Senate Judiciary Committee conducts an open hearing on the eavesdropping on Feb. 6, Attorney General Gonzales is expected to testify. The session organized for Friday by Democrats is intended to spotlight critics of the program; administration officials will not use that forum to offer a defense. The White House has invited some members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees to attend a briefing on Friday, according to Rep. Jane Harman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

The analysis released Thursday by the Justice Department, with comments from lawyers throughout the department, expanded on the legal arguments made in two still-classified legal opinions as well as in a slimmer letter that the department sent to Congress last month.

The basic thrust of the legal justification was the same - that the president has inherent authority as commander in chief to order wiretaps without warrants and that the N.S.A. operation does not violate either a 1978 law governing intelligence wiretaps or the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches.

This month's Congressional Research Service report was particularly critical of the administration's claim that the N.S.A. program was justified by a resolution passed by Congress three days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, authorizing the use of "all necessary and appropriate force" against those responsible for the terrorist acts.

The research service report found there was no indication that Congress intended to authorize warrantless wiretaps when it gave President Bush the authority to fight Al Qaeda and invade Afghanistan. But the Justice Department did not back away from its position in Thursday's report, saying the type of "signals intelligence" used in the N.S.A. operation clearly falls under the Congressional use-of-force authorization.

"The president has made clear that he will exercise all authority available to him, consistent with the Constitution, to protect the people of the United States," the report said.

The Congressional authorization on the use of force, it added, "places the president at the zenith of his powers in authorizing the N.S.A. activities."

But many critics of the program, which allows the agency to eavesdrop on international phone calls and e-mail messages to and from American citizens and others within the United States, said that they remained unconvinced.

"The administration's latest justification for circumventing the law to spy on Americans falls far short of answering the many questions Congress and the American people have about this activity," said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader. "That is why there have been bipartisan calls for administration officials to come to Congress to answer these questions and ensure that the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees can thoroughly investigate the administration's actions."

Attorney General Gonzales sent Thursday's document to Mr. Reid and to Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader. While the report did not go into many operational details of the program, it sought to bolster the case for the president to retain inherent power to order warrantless searches in the United States as part of the seeking of information on foreign agents.

That authority, the Justice Department analysis said, is consistent with a three-part test established by the Supreme Court in a 1952 case, Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company v. Sawyer, which struck down President Harry S. Truman's authority to seize the nation's steel mills in the name of national security.

Nor does the N.S.A. program conflict, the Justice Department said, with what many legal analysts had regarded as the exclusive authority for intelligence wiretaps under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, passed by Congress in 1978 in response to Watergate-era political abuses. Some presidential powers, particularly in the area of national security, are simply "beyond Congress' ability to regulate," it said.

Vice President Cheney, who was actively involved in the creation of the N.S.A. program and has been a vigorous advocate for expanded presidential power, echoed that in a speech on Thursday before the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research in New York.

While some current and former officials have challenged the value of the N.S.A. program in deterring an attack on American soil, the vice president said: "The activities conducted under this authorization have helped us to detect and prevent possible terrorist attacks against the American people. As such, this program is critical to the national security of the United States."

President Bush and Mr. Cheney have been critical of the public disclosure of the program in The New York Times, and the Justice Department has opened an investigation into the disclosure. Mr. Cheney acknowledged in his speech that "a spirited debate is now under way, and our message to the American people is clear and straightforward: These actions are within the president's authority and responsibility under the Constitution and laws, and these actions are vital to our security."

But Robert Reinstein, dean of the law school at Temple University, said in an interview that he considered the eavesdropping program "a pretty straightforward case where the president is acting illegally," and he said there appeared to be a broad consensus among legal scholars and national security experts that the administration's legal arguments were weak.

The foreign intelligence law passed by Congress in 1978 represents the Bush administration's biggest legal hurdle, he said. "When Congress speaks on questions that are domestic in nature, I really can't think of a situation where the president has successfully asserted a constitutional power to supersede that," he said.

Two leading civil rights groups brought lawsuits this week aimed at ending the N.S.A. program, and several lawyers representing defendants in terrorism cases are also seeking to challenge the program on the grounds that it may have been improperly used in criminal prosecutions.

Mr. Reinstein predicted that the court would ultimately declare the program unconstitutional. "This is domestic surveillance over American citizens for whom there is no evidence or proof that they are involved in any illegal activity, and it is in contravention of a statute of Congress specifically designed to prevent this," he said.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

http://news.findlaw.com/legalnews/document...hive_n.html#nsa

NSA - Featured Security Documents including:
US Department of Justice White Paper on NSA Legal Authorities
Letter Transmitting White Paper
Report of Congressional Research Service
Complaint in ACLU vs. NSA
Complaint in Center for Constitutional Rights v. George Bush
Letter to Congress on NSA Spying
Report of Congressional Research Service
and more

ACLU rebukes Justice Department findings on wiretaps as 'spin'
RAW STORY
Published: January 19, 2006
The American Civil Liberties Union today strongly rebuked analysis provided by the Justice Department that argues that there is a legal basis for the warrantless domestic surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency as authorized by President Bush in a release to RAW STORY.

The release follows.

House Democrats on the Judiciary Committee are scheduled to hold a forum on the issue tomorrow, where the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Director Caroline Fredrickson will testify. On Tuesday of this week, the ACLU filed a legal challenge to the NSA program on behalf of a group of prominent journalists, nonprofits, terrorism experts and community advocates. The ACLU has also called for the appointment of an independent special counsel to investigate the matter and has requested, through the Freedom of Information Act, information about the NSA's program of warrantless spying on Americans.

The following can be attributed to Anthony D. Romero, ACLU Executive Director:

“President Bush and Attorney General Gonzales can manufacture all of the legal justifications they want, but the facts and laws show that this warrantless surveillance violates the First and Fourth Amendment and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

“Any opinion coming from the Justice Department has to be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism, given Attorney General Gonzales’ involvement in the warrantless spying as White House counsel. The fox may now be guarding the henhouse, which is why we need an independent special counsel.

“Congress must hold open, substantive hearings to let the American public know how their privacy was invaded. The president must not use a claim of preserving the nation as justification to undermine the very principles that define our nation. Freedom, liberty and privacy must be protected and preserved.”

SECRECY NEWS
from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy
Volume 2006, Issue No. 8
January 20, 2006


** JUSTICE DEPT ISSUES WHITE PAPER ON NSA SURVEILLANCE
** THE LEGAL SIGNIFICANCE OF PRESIDENTIAL SIGNING STATEMENTS
** NSA: REDACTING WITH CONFIDENCE


JUSTICE DEPT ISSUES WHITE PAPER ON NSA SURVEILLANCE

The Department of Justice renewed its legal defense of warrantless
domestic intelligence surveillance by the National Security
Agency in a 42 page white paper transmitted to Congress
yesterday.

The white paper essentially reiterates at greater length the
previous defenses articulated by the Bush Administration: (1)
the NSA surveillance action was authorized by Congress when it
passed the 2001 resolution on use of military force against al
Qaeda; and (2) the President has inherent authority to conduct
such surveillance in any case. Both assertions are widely
disputed.

"The President -- in light of the broad authority to use military
force in response to the attacks of September 11th and to
prevent further catastrophic attack expressly conferred on the
President by the Constitution and confirmed and supplemented by
Congress in the AUMF [authorization for use of military force]
-- has legal authority to authorize the NSA to conduct the
signals intelligence activities he has described. Those
activities are authorized by the Constitution and by statute,
and they violate neither FISA nor the Fourth Amendment," the
document concludes.

See "Legal Authorities Supporting the Activities of the National
Security Agency Described by the President," Department of
Justice White Paper, January 19, 2006:

http://www.fas.org/irp/nsa/doj011906.pdf


THE LEGAL SIGNIFICANCE OF PRESIDENTIAL SIGNING STATEMENTS

When he signed the 2006 Defense Appropriations Act, which
included a prohibition against torture of detainees in U.S.
custody, President Bush issued a signing statement implying that
he could disregard the new prohibition in his capacity as
commander in chief.

"The executive branch shall construe [the statute], relating to
detainees, in a manner consistent with the constitutional
authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive
branch and as Commander in Chief," he wrote in the December 30,
2005 statement on H.R. 2863.

The use of Presidential signing statements to create a kind of
quasi-legislative history intended to influence future judicial
rulings is a relatively new and increasingly controversial
phenomenon.

"So far as we have been able to determine, Presidential signing
statements that purported to create legislative history for the
use of the courts was uncommon -- if indeed it existed at all --
before the Reagan and Bush Presidencies," according to a 1993
memorandum from the Department of Justice Office of Legal
Counsel.

"The Reagan and Bush Administrations made frequent use of
Presidential signing statements, not only to declare their
understanding of the constitutional effect of the statutory
language, but also to create evidence on which the courts could
rely in construing such language."

Among other problems with this practice, "it is arguable that 'by
reinterpreting those parts of congressionally enacted
legislation of which he disapproves, the President exercises
unconstitutional line-item veto power'."

See "The Legal Significance of Presidential Signing Statements,"
prepared by Assistant Attorney General Walter Dellinger,
November 3, 1993:

http://www.usdoj.gov/olc/signing.htm


NSA: REDACTING WITH CONFIDENCE

The National Security Agency has issued new guidance to assist
officials in redacting (censoring) documents in Microsoft Word
format and producing unclassified Adobe Portable Document (PDF)
files without inadvertently disclosing sensitive information.

"MS Word is used throughout the DoD and the Intelligence
Community (IC) for preparing documents, reports, notes, and
other formal and informal materials. PDF is often used as the
format for downgraded or sanitized documents."

"There are a number of pitfalls for the person attempting to
sanitize a Word document for release."

For example, "As numerous people have learned to their chagrin,
merely converting an MS Word document to PDF does not remove all
[sensitive] metadata automatically."

"This paper describes the issue, and gives a step-by-step
description of how to do it with confidence that inappropriate
material will not be released."

See "Redacting with Confidence: How to Safely Publish Sanitized
Reports Converted From Word to PDF," National Security Agency,
December 13, 2005:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/dod/nsa-redact.pdf



_______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the
Federation of American Scientists.

In opening statement, Democrat takes on warrantless wiretaps
RAW STORY
Published: January 20, 2006

STATEMENT OF CONGRESSMAN JOHN CONYERS, JR. MORE SOON.

Live audio of the hearings is available at Pacifica radio. The hearings were supposed to be on CSPAN.org but their website is currently down.

There can be no doubt that today we are in a constitutional crisis that threatens the system of checks and balances that has preserved our fundamental freedoms for more than 200 years. There is no better illustration of that crisis than the fact that the president is openly violating our nation’s laws by authorizing the NSA to engage in warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens.

The Bush Administration offers two arguments to justify their actions. First, they assert, that warrantless searches were authorized by the Afghanistan use of force resolution. Second, they say, the Constitution permits and even mandates such actions. To this member and indeed to most of our nation’s legal community, neither argument is remotely plausible or credible.

As for the Administration’s claim of statutory authority, a plain reading of the text of the resolution reveals that there is no reference whatsoever to domestic surveillance. Former Majority Leader Daschle told us that the resolution was narrowed from the Administration’s initial request to avoid such construction, and the Attorney General went so far as to admit that they were told by Members of Congress that it would be “difficult if not impossible” to amend the law to authorize such a program. As Harvard Law Professor Larry Tribe wrote me, “to argue that one couldn’t have gotten congressional authorization ... after arguing that ... one did get congressional authorization ... takes some nerve.”

In terms of inherent constitutional authority, this too flies in the face of both common sense and legal precedent. If the Supreme Court didn’t let President Truman use this authority to take over the steel mills during the Korean War in 1952, and wouldn’t let President Bush use the authority to indefinitely hold enemy combatants in 2005, it is quite obvious the constitution doesn’t allow warrantless wiretapping of U.S. citizens today. As Justice O’Connor wrote “a state of war is not a blank check.”

Perhaps what is most troubling of all is that if we let this domestic spying program continue, if we let this president convince us that we are at war, so he can do what he wants, we will allow to stand the principle that the president alone can decide what laws apply to him. I submit that is not only inconsistent with the principles upon which our Republic was founded, it denigrates the very freedom we have been fighting for since the tragic events of September 11. That is why we are holding today’s hearing.

Copyright © 2004-06 Raw Story Media, Inc. All rights reserved. | Site map |Privacy policy

January 21, 2006
More Attacks and Meetings on a Program Under Fire
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN
WASHINGTON, Jan. 20 - Vice President Dick Cheney gave Congressional leaders a closed-door briefing at the White House Friday on the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program, as Democrats escalated their attacks on President Bush over the operation by drawing comparisons to British tyrants and Nazi Germany.

With the White House under increasing attack over the program, the administration also announced that President Bush, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the former head of the agency, will each give talks next week in support of the program.

The day's events showed the White House's increasingly forceful effort to build public support for the program, as it seeks to demonstrate that Mr. Bush acted within constitutional authority in ordering the agency to monitor international e-mail and phone calls linked to Al Qaeda without seeking warrants.

While the White House usually says it pays no attention to public opinion polls, Scott McClellan, the press secretary, said at a briefing Friday that recent surveys "overwhelmingly show that the American people want us to do everything within our power to protect them."

But several opinion polls this month showed a clear divide over the issue. One poll, conducted two weeks ago by CNN/USA Today, found that 50 percent of those surveyed thought it was right for the president to order wiretaps without warrants and that 46 percent said it was wrong.

With some leading lawmakers voicing increasing unease over the program, Mr. Cheney met at the White House situation room for about an hour Friday morning to discuss it with Congressional leaders.

While officials would not discuss the substance of the briefing, Democratic Congressional leaders were thought to have expressed complaints about the limited nature of the briefings. A nonpartisan Congressional study earlier this week said that the limited briefings might have violated Congressional oversight law, and Democrats are asking that future briefings be opened to all members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.

While Mr. McClellan would not discuss Mr. Cheney's briefing, he said: "We have briefed Congressional leaders more than a dozen times. We continue to brief members of Congress in an appropriate manner."

Meanwhile, House Democrats, frustrated that Republican leaders had refused to hold hearings on the matter, held an unusual unofficial hearing of their own on Friday.

The eight Democratic lawmakers at the event were unrelenting in their criticism of a program that they said would open the way to unlimited presidential powers. Some questioned whether Mr. Bush's authorization of it was an impeachable offense.

Several lawmakers and witnesses compared the administration to a British monarchy, casting Mr. Bush as George III. Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, even compared the president's powers to those the Nazis used early to cement their power.

Mr. Nadler said that as he read the broad presidential power claimed by Mr. Bush, "if he were in Germany in 1933, he would not have required the Enabling Act to pass the Reichstag to claim the power," a reference to the law that gave Hitler broad power to run the country.

When asked about the remark, Mr. Nadler's spokesman, Reid Cherlin, said: "He's not comparing Bush to Hitler. He's saying that Nazi Germany is our most extreme example of the rapid expansion of executive power and even there, there was legislative approval of an emergency package."

In a later statement, Mr. Cherlin said Mr. Nadler had "picked an example that he shouldn't have" in illustrating his point.

The White House declined to send anyone to testify at the Democratic event. Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., the Wisconsin Republican who leads the House Judiciary Committee and who has declined to schedule hearings on the eavesdropping program, said the event did not meet Congressional standards because of a "completely one-sided list of witnesses."

While several witnesses brought reputations as liberal critics of the administration, one witness, Bruce Fein, had been a senior Justice Department official under President Ronald Reagan and was critical of the program's legal underpinnings.

Mr. Fein suggested that he would have resigned rather than acquiesce in such a program.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Justice Dept. gives 42-page rationale for secret spying
Logic questioned by many in Congress
- Edward Epstein, Chronicle Washington Bureau
Friday, January 20, 2006



Washington -- Taking aim at a rising chorus of critics, the Bush administration issued its most thorough defense Thursday of President Bush's domestic spying program as a valid exercise of his wartime powers the past four years in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The 42-page Justice Department white paper said Congress in October 2001 implicitly granted Bush authority to order the National Security Agency to eavesdrop without a warrant on Americans and others in the United States when it gave him the power to use force against al Qaeda.

The Justice Department rationale for the domestic eavesdropping program rejects the arguments of Bush's critics who say the president is breaking the law by sanctioning the activity without the approval of a judge as required for domestic spying. Those same critics -- inside and outside Congress -- repeated Thursday their view that the president is twisting the October 2001 congressional use-of-force resolution way beyond its original intent to try to justify the illegal activity.

Justice Department officials said they released the report, which was addressed to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and Democratic leader Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, after Attorney General Alberto Gonzales ordered the department to provide Congress and the American people with more information on the spying program.

Officials said they weren't reacting to recent developments such as Tuesday's lawsuits challenging the president's authority for the eavesdropping or to former Democratic Vice President Al Gore's call on Monday for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate possible administration lawbreaking in the warrantless surveillance.

The criticism will continue today when House Judiciary Committee Democrats hold an ad hoc hearing to take testimony from several critics of the eavesdropping.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled Congress' first official hearing into Bush's controversial program on Feb. 6. Gonzales, Bush's former White House counsel, is expected to use the white paper as the framework for his testimony as the opening witness.

The Justice Department, in its report, said Bush acted within the historic bounds of wartime presidents to prevent "any future acts of international terrorism against the United States." It also said that under Article II of the Constitution the president has sweeping powers in dealing with foreign enemies because he is the "sole organ" in foreign affairs.

The department, along with Vice President Dick Cheney in a separate appearance in New York City, also said all the National Security Agency activity involved international communications, which officials believe is connected with al Qaeda or related terrorist networks.

"Obviously no one can guarantee that we won't be hit again, but our nation has been protected by more than luck," Cheney said in defending the administration's spying efforts.

The Justice Department legal analysis said the snooping did not violate the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires federal authorities to get warrants for such wiretaps because when Congress passed the law, it envisioned that it could be modified by future congressional acts. The 2001 resolution constituted such an additional modification, according to the Justice Department's lawyers.

The report also said that the activity did not violate the Fourth Amendment's ban on "unreasonable searches and seizures" because federal courts have recognized the president's right to collect foreign intelligence without warrants.

"Warrantless surveillance is well-established," said Steven Bradbury, acting assistant attorney general for the office of legal counsel, in a briefing for reporters. "Presidents have done it in virtually every armed conflict the country has been engaged in."

Bradbury said the 2001 congressional resolution gave Bush "very broad authorization to use all necessary force to protect the country against armed attack."

But Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University who will be among those testifying today at the Democrats' hearing, said it's clear that the 2001 use-of-force resolution did not authorize Bush to conduct the warrantless eavesdropping.

He said that in 2001, "Congress rejected demands for the administration to expand its powers. And now the administration is arguing that the same Congress that rejected these powers gave them these powers. There is no question the president violated federal law."

Turley belittled the Justice Department's legal analysis.

"It's hard to tell if this should be filed in the Library of Congress under fiction or nonfiction," he said. Howard Gantman, spokesman for Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said that in preparation for Gonzales' scheduled Feb. 6 appearance at the Senate Judiciary Committee, she has asked for a briefing by Justice Department lawyers to explain the justifications for the spying program.

But he said the department had so far refused. Feinstein, a member of the Judiciary Committee, has criticized the Bush program.

The ACLU, which sued Bush and the security agency seeking to stop the warrantless interception of electronic communications, has joined Gore's call for a special counsel.

ACLU executive director Anthony Romero said, "Any opinion coming from the Justice Department has to be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism, given Attorney General Gonzales' involvement in the warrantless spying as White House counsel. The fox may now be guarding the henhouse, which is why we need an independent special counsel."

E-mail Edward Epstein at eepstein@sfchronicle.com.

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URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file...MNGEVGQDE81.DTL


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©2006 San Francisco Chronicle

Search Engines' Trustworthiness Shaken By Government Data Gathering By Antone Gonsalves
TechWeb.com
Fri Jan 20, 6:36 PM ET

The attention that has been drawn to the major search engines that handed over anonymous search results subpoenaed by the U.S. Justice Department has brought into question whether the Internet businesses can be trusted with people's private information.

On Thursday, America Online Inc., Microsoft Corp.'s MSN, Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) and Google Inc. acknowledged that they received subpoenas from government prosecutors trying to revive the 1998 Child Online Protection Act that was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court. AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo acknowledged handing over search data to the government; Google has refused and intends to fight, saying the Bush administration's requests are too broad.

Search terms plugged into Google and the rest can give lots of clues on people. For example the terms could indicate a person has a medical condition, an unfaithful spouse, concerns over sexual orientation, or many other issues that most people would prefer to keep private.

In addition, many people sign in with user name and password as a requirement to use other services, such as Web mail, instant messaging and blogging, creating an even tighter connection between a person and his use of a search engine's offerings.

The amount of data gathered by search engines already rankles some people. So the disclosure that three out of four major search engines would give up data without a fight, even though the information could not identify a person, is sure to intensify some people's feelings about data-gathering on the Web.

"My approach to sites asking for too much personal information is to simply lie," Ned of Oklahoma City, who asked that his last name be withheld, said in an email. "Even if I don't mind telling them things like my date of birth, I lie on the principle of it and to screw up their data."

In providing information, AOL, Yahoo and MSN did tarnish their trustworthiness, one expert believes.

"AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo did not violate the privacy of any user by handing over this information. No private data was revealed," Danny Sullivan, editor of Search Engine Watch said Friday in his blog. "Nevertheless, by not pushing back against such a bad request for data, it leaves open the real fear that they might not push back if the US government decided to go on a real fishing expedition in the future. Privacy may not have been lost but trust was."

A lack of trust is one reason behind the Electronic Freedom Foundation's recommendation that people use software that hides their computer's Internet address while surfing the Web or using search engines. As long as a person doesn't enter a site with a user name and password, then he can wander the Web almost anonymously.

"We don't believe anybody should be keeping all this information," Rebecca Jeschke, spokeswoman for the privacy group, said of data gathering by search engines. "The government wouldn't be able to get this information, if it wasn't there."

The EFF is a plaintiff in the lawsuit challenging COPA, which was meant to shield minors from Web sites that offer sexually explicit content. The high court struck down provisions that required sites to offer such content only to registered users or people who sign-in first, saying that filtering software is sufficient to keep the content away from children.

In seeking the search data, government lawyers are hoping to show a federal court in Pennsylvania that sexually explicit material is easily accessible through search engines and is not adequately blocked by filters.

To Andrew B. Serwin, a partner in the San Diego law firm Foley & Lardner LLP and a consultant on privacy issues to Internet companies, trust and privacy are "two sides of the same coin."

"Whether you put it in terms of trust or privacy, the concern is that the government could use non-personal information as a basis for a warrant to get personal information," Serwin said.

Once government prosecutors get non-identifiable information, they could see patterns that they decide are suspicious, and then go back to subpoena specific data that could identify people whose searches fell within those patterns.

"It is not beyond the realm of possibility that the government would say, 'we know these searches occurred, so lets have more information,'" Serwin said.

There is no indication that the Justice Department is heading in that direction in the current case, but providing such large amounts of data could be the beginnings of a trend, the lawyer said.

The issues in the current case also have no implications for national security and fighting terrorism, Serwin said. Such issues are handled through the Patriot Act, which gives federal law enforcement the right to demand information in secrecy.

"We're not dealing with a Patriot Act request, in which case we wouldn't have heard about it," Serwin said. "This is not a national security issue."

The question of trust and Internet businesses has spread beyond U.S. borders to places with less political freedom. Microsoft this month was criticized for taking down from its blog-hosting service MSN Spaces, the blog of an outspoken Chinese journalist Zhao Jing. The company said it was complying with Chinese laws.

In September, Yahoo gave information about journalist Shi Tao's personal email account to Beijing, which later jailed him for 10 years on charges of divulging state secrets.



Copyright © 2006 CMP Media LLC.


Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

M O R E N E W S F R O M
• US House of Representatives
• George Bush
• Robert Wexler
• US News
• Terrorism
Posted on Fri, Jan. 20, 2006
U.S. accused of spying on those who disagree with Bush policies
BY WILLIAM E. GIBSONSouth Florida Sun-SentinelWASHINGTON -

While the White House defended domestic surveillance as a safeguard against terrorism, a Florida peace activist and several Democrats in Congress accused the Bush administration on Friday of spying on Americans who disagree with President Bush's policies.
Richard Hersh, of Boca Raton, Fla., director of Truth Project Inc. of Palm Beach County, told an ad hoc panel of House Democrats that his group and others in South Florida have been infiltrated and spied upon despite having no connections to terrorists.
"Agents rummaged through the trash, snooped into e-mails, packed Web sites and listened in on phone conversations," Hersh charged. "We know that address books and activist meeting lists have disappeared."
The Truth Project gained national attention when NBC News reported last month that it was described as a "credible threat" in a database of suspicious activity compiled by the Pentagon's Talon program. The listing cited the group's gathering a year ago at a Quaker meeting house in Lake Worth, Fla., to talk about ways to counter military recruitment at high schools.
Talon is separate from the controversial domestic-surveillance program conducted by the National Security Agency. Bush has acknowledged signing orders that allow the NSA to eavesdrop without the usual court warrants, prompting an outcry from many in Congress.
Bush plans to tour the NSA on Wednesday as part of a campaign to defend his handling of the program.
"This is a critical tool that helps us save lives and prevent attacks," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said on Friday. "It is limited and targeted to al-Qaida communications, with the focus being on detection and prevention."
The Defense Department's Talon program collects data from a wide variety of sources, including military personnel and private citizens, Pentagon spokesman Greg Hicks said.
"They are unfiltered dots of information about perceived threats," Hicks said. "An analyst will look at that information. And what we are trying to do is connect the dots before the next major attack."
To Hersh and some members of Congress, the warrant-less surveillance and Talon are all a part of domestic-spying operations that threaten civil liberties of average Americans and put dissenters under a cloud of suspicion.
"Neither you nor anybody in that (Quaker) church had anything to do with terrorism," said Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla. "The fact is, the Truth Project may have a philosophy that is adverse to the political philosophy and goals of the president of the United States. And as a result of that different philosophy, the president and the secretary of defense ordered that your group be spied upon.
"There should not be a single American who today remains confident that it couldn't happen to them."

The Other Big Brother
The Pentagon has its own domestic spying program. Even its leaders say the outfit may have gone too far.

Jan. 30, 2006 issue - The demonstration seemed harmless enough. Late on a June afternoon in 2004, a motley group of about 10 peace activists showed up outside the Houston headquarters of Halliburton, the giant military contractor once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney. They were there to protest the corporation's supposed "war profiteering." The demonstrators wore papier-mache masks and handed out free peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches to Halliburton employees as they left work. The idea, according to organizer Scott Parkin, was to call attention to allegations that the company was overcharging on a food contract for troops in Iraq. "It was tongue-in-street political theater," Parkin says.

But that's not how the Pentagon saw it. To U.S. Army analysts at the top-secret Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), the peanut-butter protest was regarded as a potential threat to national security. Created three years ago by the Defense Department, CIFA's role is "force protection"—tracking threats and terrorist plots against military installations and personnel inside the United States. In May 2003, Paul Wolfowitz, then deputy Defense secretary, authorized a fact-gathering operation code-named TALON—short for Threat and Local Observation Notice—that would collect "raw information" about "suspicious incidents." The data would be fed to CIFA to help the Pentagon's "terrorism threat warning process," according to an internal Pentagon memo.

A Defense document shows that Army analysts wrote a report on the Halliburton protest and stored it in CIFA's database. It's not clear why the Pentagon considered the protest worthy of attention—although organizer Parkin had previously been arrested while demonstrating at ExxonMobil headquarters (the charges were dropped). But there are now questions about whether CIFA exceeded its authority and conducted unauthorized spying on innocent people and organizations. A Pentagon memo obtained by NEWSWEEK shows that the deputy Defense secretary now acknowledges that some TALON reports may have contained information on U.S. citizens and groups that never should have been retained. The number of reports with names of U.S. persons could be in the thousands, says a senior Pentagon official who asked not be named because of the sensitivity of the subject.

CIFA's activities are the latest in a series of disclosures about secret government programs that spy on Americans in the name of national security. In December, the ACLU obtained documents showing the FBI had investigated several activist groups, including People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and Greenpeace, supposedly in an effort to discover possible ecoterror connections. At the same time, the White House has spent weeks in damage-control mode, defending the controversial program that allowed the National Security Agency to monitor the telephone conversations of U.S. persons suspected of terror links, without obtaining warrants.

Last Thursday, Cheney called the program "vital" to the country's defense against Al Qaeda. "Either we are serious about fighting this war on terror or not," he said in a speech to the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. But as the new information about CIFA shows, the scope of the U.S. government's spying on Americans may be far more extensive than the public realizes.

It isn't clear how many groups and individuals were snagged by CIFA's dragnet. Details about the program, including its size and budget, are classified. In December, NBC News obtained a 400-page compilation of reports that detailed a portion of TALON's surveillance efforts. It showed the unit had collected information on nearly four dozen antiwar meetings or protests, including one at a Quaker meetinghouse in Lake Worth, Fla., and a Students Against War demonstration at a military recruiting fair at the University of California, Santa Cruz. A Pentagon spokesman declined to say why a private company like Halliburton would be deserving of CIFA's protection. But in the past, Defense Department officials have said that the "force protection" mission includes military contractors since soldiers and Defense employees work closely with them and therefore could be in danger.






CIFA researchers apparently cast a wide net and had a number of surveillance methods—both secretive and mundane—at their disposal. An internal CIFA PowerPoint slide presentation recently obtained by William Arkin, a former U.S. Army intelligence analyst who writes widely about military affairs, gives some idea how the group operated. The presentation, which Arkin provided to NEWSWEEK, shows that CIFA analysts had access to law-enforcement reports and sensitive military and U.S. intelligence documents. (The group's motto appears at the bottom of each PowerPoint slide: "Counterintelligence 'to the Edge'.") But the organization also gleaned data from "open source Internet monitoring." In other words, they surfed the Web.

That may have been how the Pentagon came to be so interested in a small gathering outside Halliburton. On June 23, 2004, a few days before the Halliburton protest, an ad for the event appeared on houston.indymedia.org, a Web site for lefty Texas activists. "Stop the war profiteers," read the posting. "Bring out the kids, relatives, Dick Cheney, and your favorite corporate pigs at the trough as we will provide food for free."

Four months later, on Oct. 25, the TALON team reported another possible threat to national security. The source: a Miami antiwar Web page. "Website advertises protest planned at local military recruitment facility," the internal report warns. The database entry refers to plans by a south Florida group called the Broward Anti-War Coalition to protest outside a strip-mall recruiting office in Lauderhill, Fla. The TALON entry lists the upcoming protest as a "credible" threat. As it turned out, the entire event consisted of 15 to 20 activists waving a giant BUSH LIED sign. No one was arrested. "It's very interesting that the U.S. military sees a domestic peace group as a threat," says Paul Lefrak, a librarian who organized the protest.

Arkin says a close reading of internal CIFA documents suggests the agency may be expanding its Internet monitoring, and wants to be as surreptitious as possible. CIFA has contracted to buy "identity masking" software that would allow the agency to create phony Web identities and let them appear to be located in foreign countries, according to a copy of the contract with Computer Sciences Corp. (The firm declined to comment.)

Pentagon officials have broadly defended CIFA as a legitimate response to the domestic terror threat. But at the same time, they acknowledge that an internal Pentagon review has found that CIFA's database contained some information that may have violated regulations. The department is not allowed to retain information about U.S. citizens for more than 90 days—unless they are "reasonably believed" to have some link to terrorism, criminal wrongdoing or foreign intelligence. There was information that was "improperly stored," says a Pentagon spokesman who was authorized to talk about the program (but not to give his name). "It was an oversight." In a memo last week, obtained by NEWSWEEK, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England ordered CIFA to purge such information from its files—and directed that all Defense Department intelligence personnel receive "refresher training" on department policies.

That's not likely to stop the questions. Last week Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee pushed for an inquiry into CIFA's activities and who it's watching. "This is a significant Pandora's box [Pentagon officials] don't want opened," says Arkin. "What we're looking at is hints of what they're doing." As far as the Pentagon is concerned, that means we've already seen too much.

© 2006 Newsweek, Inc.

Bush Leads Defense of NSA Domestic Spying :

The Bush administration is opening a campaign to push back against criticism of its domestic spying program, ahead of congressional hearings into whether President Bush has the legal authority to eavesdrop on Americans.
http://tinyurl.com/87gcw

===
Kennedy resolution demands Bush wiretap probe:

"If President Bush can make his own rules for domestic surveillance, Big Brother has run amok," Kennedy said yesterday. "We need a thorough investigation of these activities. Congress and the American people deserve answers, and they deserve answers now."
http://www.lowellsun.com/local/ci_3424691

===
The War on Dissent Gets Creepy:

"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience. Our problem is that people all over the world have obeyed the dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions have been killed because of this obedience...Our problem is that people are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and stupidity, and war, and cruelty.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/ferner5.html

===
U.S. accused of spying on those who disagree with Bush policies:

"Agents rummaged through the trash, snooped into e-mails, packed Web sites and listened in on phone conversations," Hersh charged. "We know that address books and activist meeting lists have disappeared."
http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/new...cs/13675006.htm

===
Belafonte: Bush administration backs Gestapo tactics:

"We've come to this dark time in which the Gestapo of Homeland Security lurks here, where citizens are having their rights suspended," Belafonte told thousands of people at the annual meeting of the Arts Presenters Members Conference.
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/new...0,2415767.story

===
The Other Big Brother:

The Pentagon has its own domestic spying program. Even its leaders say the outfit may have gone too far.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10965509/site/newsweek

January 23, 2006
News Analysis
Delicate Dance for Bush in Depicting Spy Program as Asset
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
WASHINGTON, Jan. 22 - With a campaign of high-profile national security events set for the next three days, following Karl Rove's blistering speech to Republicans on Friday, the White House has effectively declared that it views its controversial secret surveillance program not as a political liability but as an asset, a way to attack Democrats and re-establish President Bush's standing after a difficult year.

Whether the White House can succeed depends very much, members of both parties say, on its success in framing a complicated debate when the country is torn between its historic aversion to governmental intrusion and its recent fear of terrorist attacks at home.

Polls suggest that Americans are divided over whether Mr. Bush has the authority to order the searches without warrants that critics say violate the law and that the president says are legal and critical to the nation's security.

But as the White House and Democrats are well aware, the issue can draw very different reactions depending on how it is presented. These next few days could prove critical, as both Mr. Bush and Congressional Democrats move aggressively to define what is at stake.

Americans may be willing to support extraordinary measures - perhaps extralegal ones - if they are posed in the starkest terms of protecting the nation from another calamitous attack. They are less likely to be supportive, members of both parties say, if the question is presented as a president breaking the law to spy on the nation's own citizens.

Viewed from the perspective of the battles over the Homeland Security Act or the USA Patriot Act, this White House holds a tactical edge; it has repeatedly proved highly effective in defining complicated debates against the Democratic Party. Applying the campaign lessons of simplicity and repetition, Mr. Bush and Mr. Rove, his chief political adviser, have systematically presented arguments in accessible if sometimes exaggerated terms, and they have regularly returned to the theme of terrorism since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Mr. Rove's speech on Friday to the Republican National Committee was a classic example. "Let me be as clear as I can be: President Bush believes if Al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they're calling and why," Mr. Rove said. "Some important Democrats clearly disagree."

Democrats - and, though Mr. Rove made no mention of this Friday, some Republicans, too - have indeed challenged the administration for eavesdropping without obtaining warrants. They argue, among other points, that the White House is bypassing legal mechanisms established in 1978 that already allow law enforcement agencies to move rapidly to monitor communications that might involve terrorists. Yet it is difficult to think of a Democrat who has actually argued that it is not "in our national security interest" to track Qaeda calls to the United States, as Mr. Rove contested; he did not offer any examples of whom he had in mind.

Beyond that tactical edge, the White House enjoys the advantage of its platform. The sheer crush of news media attention to a rare public speech by Mr. Rove could not have been lost on Democrats.

By contrast, there is no single Democrat who stands as the voice of opposition. That difference is likely to become particularly glaring this week, with a speech on Monday by Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the former head of the National Security Agency; a legal defense of the spying program on Tuesday by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales; and a visit by Mr. Bush to N.S.A. headquarters on Wednesday. This orchestrated campaign is the work of the same White House that initially offered a crouched, guarded response to the disclosure of the eavesdropping program last month.

Still, in many significant ways the task the White House faces now may prove more daunting than the battles it has waged on this terrain before.

A number of Republicans have joined Democrats in challenging the surveillance program, pointedly reminding the administration that precedents established today will be in place whenever a Democrat returns to power.

"A lot of Democrats?" said one prominent Republican supporter of Mr. Bush, who did not want to be identified while being critical of a White House that famously does not brook criticism. "Democrats, Karl? Republicans, too."

David A. Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, said: "A lot of conservatives are very skeptical about it. It is not as clean-cut a political win as the administration thinks that it is."

Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, is planning hearings on the surveillance program. And in an interview on Fox News on Sunday, Senator John McCain of Arizona said he did not think the president had the legal authority for this operation, adding that the White House should seek Congressional approval to alter the 1978 provisions if it thinks they are not working now.

Mr. McCain also came to the defense of Democrats in response to Mr. Rove's suggestion that they were not committed to the nation's security. "Do I think that the president's leadership has been worthy of support of our party and our leadership?" he said. "Yes. But there's too many good Democrats over there who are as concerned about national security and work just as hard as I do."

Beyond that, one Republican analyst who is skeptical about the White House strategy said Mr. Bush's position was hardly helped by the fact that his credibility numbers have dropped along with his popularity since his re-election. Mr. Bush may find that, as some Democrats have suggested, the invocations of Sept. 11 do not have the force they once had.

For their part, Democrats said they have learned from their repeated defeats by this White House. The Democratic presidential candidate of 2004, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, said in an interview on Sunday that Mr. Rove and the White House were willfully distorting the Democratic position.

"He's playing an old game," Mr. Kerry said. "Every time they have a problem, they play the 9/11 card."

"We all support surveillance - that's where they are playing word games again," Mr. Kerry said. "You can protect the safety of the American people and you can protect the Constitution."

The political complexity of the issue was reflected in remarks by Governor Mitt Romney of Massachusetts, a Republican, who, like Mr. Kerry, is considering a run for president. Speaking by telephone on a trip to Iowa, Mr. Romney at first offered full support for the president's surveillance program.

"The eavesdropping is a big matter on the coasts for people who are inclined to dislike the president," Mr. Romney said. "The great majority of Americans think it is the president's first responsibility to protect the lives of the American citizens in an urgent setting where there is a threat of terrorism."

But Mr. Romney called back a few moments later to make clear that he would have a different view if the program were found to be unlawful.

"I would never suggest that the president should break the law," he said. "My guess is, my assumption is, he did not break the law. The president has a responsibility to follow the law, which I believe is likely to be found, but he also has a primary responsibility to protect the American people."

David D. Kirkpatrick contributed reporting for this article.



Copyright 2006The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map Back to Top

January 22, 2006
Eavesdropping Leaps Into 21st Century
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:46 p.m. ET

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- In the past, intercepting communications meant just that -- copying a telegram mid-route, steaming open an envelope or attaching alligator clips to the copper wires that connected every telephone in the world.

But the old ways of communicating are heading into the sunset like the Pony Express and being replaced by phone calls, instant messages, e-mail and more that are converted into digital data before they gallop across the Internet and other advanced networks.

This constant interchange of massive amounts of data, converging into speeding bitstreams on common pipes, is both a blessing and a curse for eavesdroppers.

It's easier than ever to access wholesale feeds of data. But such work is also more controversial than traditional wiretapping, as seen in objections to post-9/11 warrantless domestic surveillance and to regulatory moves to require networks to be tap-friendly.

Critics question whether safeguards put in place a quarter century ago following FBI wiretapping misconduct are strong enough to prevent abuse in the 21st century. Others fear the information superhighway is turning out to be a fast path to mass surveillance.

''The thing that really should worry people is that once the capability is there, people will abuse it,'' said Jennifer Granick, executive director of Stanford University's Center for Internet and Society. ''The opportunity for abuse is so much greater, because so much more of our private information is transmitted over the network.''

Always a hot topic, the debate over wiretapping is further fueled today not only by the knowledge of what's possible but also by a dearth of details of what's actually happening.

What makes the White House surveillance program -- acknowledged after The New York Times disclosed it in December -- a cause of such concern is that it skirts existing laws and employs techniques resembling a wide-mouthed vacuum before the fine-toothed combs can be wielded.

It's being performed by the ultra-secret National Security Agency, which is believed to have the most advanced information vacuuming technology available. The NSA did not return telephone calls seeking comment on its methods.

The agency's efforts are reported to enjoy the cooperation of telecommunications companies, which run the major backbones and junctions where data -- phone calls and Internet traffic -- is exchanged between carriers' networks. Those companies have refused to confirm or deny to The Associated Press whether they've cooperated with the program, which the White House says began in 2002 with the aim of preventing terrorist attacks.

But they could be helping in a number of ways to provide information on who's talking to whom, when, how long the communication lasts and, ultimately, the content itself. Under the laws bypassed by the Bush administration, warrants for wiretaps require some evidence of wrongdoing.

Given the huge amount of data that traverses networks, it's likely that one element of the program involves analyzing traffic to single out anyone who communicates with people in suspicious locations. Data accumulated for phone billing could be one of the sources.

Modern networks can yield such information not just for phone calls but also for any other type of communication that passes through. When the data is converted to packets, as in the Internet, each one contains a header with the origin and destination.

Even without support from a carrier, the NSA could be sniffing communication as it traverses the airwaves or passes through the millions of miles of fiber optic cable that are buried underground or beneath oceans.

The technical problem is in the fire hose of information involved, said Mark Rasch, a former Justice Department computer crimes prosecutor.

''The idea that the NSA could be sitting on every call going internationally, listening in on every possible language, for the words al-Qaida,' 'terrorist' or 'bombs' is just fallacy,'' he said. ''Computers capable of doing that simply don't exist and hopefully never will.''

But the technology does exist to quickly read just the destination or origin information.

That sort of monitoring, if done on a wide scale, creates thorny moral, ethical and legal problems because those channels are much more likely to contain the chatter of innocents than the machinations of terrorists. And it raises the question of how that traffic is used.

''The thing about traffic analysis is you can mine that to any depth you want,'' said Bruce Schneier, chief technology officer of Counterpane Internet Security Inc.

In domestic criminal cases, law enforcement officials who want simply to know who is talking to whom -- excluding content -- need only tell a court it's important to a case. But that low burden of proof was established with the belief that only one line would be monitored.

When such surveillance is done on all outbound international calls, the law is not clear.

''I would say the Fourth Amendment (guaranteeing protection against unreasonable searches) is the Fourth Amendment, and the fact that you're invading the privacy of millions as opposed to dozens should make it worse, not better,'' said Rasch, who is now chief security counsel at Solutionary Inc., a security risk management firm.

It's believed that once the traffic analysis identifies ''people of interest,'' they are then targeted for further surveillance and, possibly, full-content monitoring. Then, the NSA could simply mirror the data going to or coming from a target. It could even set up a parallel phone company or its own Internet Service Provider that would be invisible to its targets, Rasch said.

Critics note that the White House could easily have used the secret court created by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to get approval for such wiretaps, but chose instead to bypass it.

As it is, the FISA court has been criticized for rubber stamping requests.

''During the Clinton years, we were fighting that kangaroo court -- they never said no,'' Schneier said. ''Here we are now wishing for the little oversight that the court had.''

The NSA surveillance also raises questions about wiretapping in investigations unrelated to national security.

Responding to complaints by law enforcers that such digital communications as Internet telephony can stymie their eavesdropping, the FCC decided last year decided that the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act should be extended next year to apply to some broadband Internet access providers and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) companies.

CALEA compels those companies to proactively build out that capability, and network equipment vendors are starting to building surveillance tools into their gear in anticipation of compliance.

Some companies, such as VeriSign Inc. and NeuStar Inc., offer an all-in-one service for carriers and service providers, which some federal agencies have argued will actually enhance privacy for people not under investigation.

But critics say that rather than laying the groundwork for privacy, new regulations will more likely enable greater misuse.

''There's no question in my mind that once we make the networks less secure because of CALEA, we will exploit that lack of security to intercept communications under every legal authority asserted by the government,'' Rasch said.



Copyright 2006 The Associated Press

From Your Mouth to His Ears
How Cheney Used the NSA for Domestic Spying Prior to 9/11
By JASON LEOPOLD

In the months before 9/11, thousands of American citizens were inadvertently swept up in wiretaps, had their emails monitored, and were being watched as they surfed the Internet by spies at the super-secret National Security Agency, former NSA and counterterrorism officials said.

The NSA, with full knowledge of the White House, crossed the line from routine surveillance of foreigners and suspected terrorists into illegal activity by continuing to monitor the international telephone calls and emails of Americans without a court order. The NSA unintentionally intercepts Americans' phone calls and emails if the agency's computers zero in on a specific keyword used in the communication. But once the NSA figures out that they are listening in on an American, the eavesdropping is supposed to immediately end, and the identity of the individual is supposed to be deleted. While the agency did follow protocol, there were instances when the NSA was instructed to keep tabs on certain individuals that became of interest to some officials in the White House.

What sets this type of operation apart from the unprecedented covert domestic spying activities the NSA had been conducting after 9/11 is a top secret executive order signed by President Bush in 2002 authorizing the NSA to target specific American citizens. Prior to 9/11, American citizens were the subject of non-specific surveillance by the NSA that was condoned and approved by President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, according to former NSA and counterterrorism officials.

The sources, who requested anonymity because they were instructed not to talk about NSA activities but who hope they can testify before Congress about the domestic spying, said that in December 2000, the NSA completed a report for the incoming administration titled "Transition 2001," which explained, among other things, how the NSA would improve its intelligence gathering capabilities by hiring additional personnel.

Moreover, in a warning to the incoming administration, the agency said that in its quest to compete on a technological level with terrorists who have access to state-of-the-art equipment, some American citizens would get caught up in the NSA's surveillance activities. However, in those instances, the identities of the Americans who made telephone calls overseas would be "minimized," one former NSA official said, in order to conceal the identity of the American citizen picked up on a wiretap.

"What we're supposed to do is delete the name of the person," said the former NSA official, who worked as an encryption specialist.

The former official said that even during the Clinton administration, the NSA would inadvertently obtain the identities of Americans citizens in its wiretaps as a result of certain keywords, like bomb or jihad, NSA computers are programmed to identify. When the NSA prepares its reports and transcripts of the conversations, the names of Americans are supposed to be immediately destroyed.

By law, the NSA is prohibited from spying on a United States citizen, a US corporation or an immigrant who is in this country on permanent residence. With permission from a special court, the NSA can eavesdrop on diplomats and foreigners inside the US.

"If, in the course of surveillance, NSA analysts learn that it involves a US citizen or company, they are dumping that information right then and there," an unnamed official told the Boston Globe in a story published October 27, 2001.

But after Bush was sworn in as president, the way the NSA normally handled those issues started to change dramatically. Vice President Cheney, as Bob Woodward noted in his book Plan of Attack, was tapped by Bush in the summer of 2001 to be more of a presence at intelligence agencies, including the CIA and NSA.

"Given Cheney's background on national security going back to the Ford years, his time on the House Intelligence Committee, and as secretary of defense, Bush said at the top of his list of things he wanted Cheney to do was intelligence," Woodward wrote in his book about the buildup to the Iraq war. "In the first months of the new administration, Cheney made the rounds of the intelligence agencies--the CIA, the National Security Agency, which intercepted communications, and the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency. "

It was then that the NSA started receiving numerous requests from Cheney and other officials in the state and defense departments to reveal the identities of the Americans blacked out or deleted from intelligence reports so administration officials could better understand the context of the intelligence.
Separately, at this time, Cheney was working with intelligence agencies, including the NSA, to develop a large-scale emergency plan to deal with any biological, chemical or nuclear attack on US soil.

Requesting that the NSA reveal the identity of Americans caught in wiretaps is legal as long as it serves the purpose of understanding the context of the intelligence information.

But the sources said that on dozens of occasions Cheney would, upon learning the identity of the individual, instruct the NSA to continue monitoring specific Americans caught in the wiretaps if he thought more information would be revealed, which crossed the line into illegal territory.

Cheney advised President Bush of what had turned up in the raw NSA reports, said one former White House official who worked on counterterrorism related issues.

"What's really disturbing is that some of those people the vice president was curious about were people who worked at the White House or the State Department," one former counterterrorism official said. "There was a real feeling of paranoia that permeated from the vice president's office and I don't think it had anything to do with the threat of terrorism. I can't say what was contained in those taps that piqued his interest. I just don't know."

An NSA spokesperson would not comment for this story. Because of the level of secrecy at the agency, it's impossible to ascertain for the record how far the agency has gone in its domestic surveillance.

James Bamford, the author of the bestselling books The Puzzle Palace and Body of Secrets, which blew the door wide open by first revealing the NSA's covert activities, said he doesn't believe terrorism was a priority for the administration before 9/11 and he doesn't think the agency targeted specific Americans as it is doing now.

"I looked into that theory," Bamford said in an interview. "And I was assured that domestic surveillance was a black area the NSA stayed away from before 9/11.

The NSA was sort of a side agency before 9/11. At that point they were looking for a mission. Terrorism was not a big priority. (American) names may have been picked up but I was told they dropped them immediately after. That's the procedure."

But Bamford said it's possible the NSA may have conducted the type of spying prior to 9/11 that the former NSA officials described. "It's hard to tell" if that happened, Bamford said. "It's a very secret agency."

In the summer of 2001, the NSA spent millions of dollars on a publicity campaign to repair its public image by taking the unprecedented step of opening up its headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland to reporters, to dispel the myth that the NSA was spying on Americans.

In a July 10, 2001, segment on "Nightline," host Chris Bury reported that "privacy advocates in the United States and Europe are raising new questions about whether innocent civilians get caught up in the NSA's electronic web."

Then-NSA Director Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, who was interviewed by "Nightline," said it was absolutely untrue that the agency was monitoring Americans who are suspected of being agents of a foreign power without first seeking a special warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
"We don't do anything willy-nilly," Hayden said. "We're a foreign intelligence agency. We try to collect information that is of value to American decision-makers, to protect American values, America--and American lives. To suggest that we're out there, on our own, renegade, pulling in random communications, is--is simply wrong. So everything we do is for a targeted foreign intelligence purpose. With regard to the--the question of industrial espionage, no. Period. Dot. We don't do that."

But, when asked "How do we know that the fox isn't guarding the chicken coop?" Hayden responded by saying that Americans should trust the employees of the NSA.

"They deserve your trust, but you don't have to trust them," Hayden said. "We aren't off the leash, so to speak, guarding ourselves. We have a body of oversight within the executive branch, in the Department of Defense, in the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, which is comprised of both government and nongovernmental officials. You've got both houses of Congress with--with very active--in some cases, aggressive--intelligence oversight committees with staff members who have an access badge to NSA just like mine."

One former NSA official said in response to Hayden's 2001 interview, "What do you expect him to say? He's got to deny it. I agree. We weren't targeting specific people, which is what the President's executive order does. However, we did keep tabs on some Americans we caught if there was an interest" by the White House. "That's not legal. And I am very upset that I played a part in it."

James Risen, the New York Times reporter credited with exposing the NSA's covert domestic surveillance activities that came as a result of a secret executive order President Bush issued in 2002, wrote in his just-published book, State of War, that the administration was very aggressive in its intelligence gathering activities before 9/11. However, Risen does not say that means the administration permitted the NSA to spy on Americans.

"It is now clear that the White House went through the motions of the public debate over the (2001) Patriot Act, all the while knowing that the intelligence community was secretly conducting a far more aggressive domestic surveillance campaign," Risen wrote in State of War.

Jason Leopold is the author of the explosive memoir, NEWS JUNKIE, to be published in April on Process/Feral House books.

http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/view.php?Stor...22-084516-6676r

Pentagon's domestic spying may go too far
WASHINGTON, Jan. 22 (UPI) -- Some Pentagon leaders say its domestic spying program may have gone too far.

A Pentagon memo obtained by Newsweek shows that some reports gathered for the top-secret Counterintelligence Field Activity program may have contained information on U.S. citizens and groups that never should have been retained.

The CIFA was created by the Defense Department in 2003 to track threats and terrorist plots against military installations and personnel inside the United States.

In May 2003, Paul Wolfowitz, then deputy Defense secretary, authorized a fact-gathering operation code-named TALON -- short for Threat and Local Observation Notice -- that would collect "raw information" about "suspicious incidents," Newsweek said. The data would be fed to CIFA to help the Pentagon's "terrorism threat warning process."

The number of reports with names of U.S. persons could be in the thousands, a senior Pentagon official told Newsweek. Officials acknowledge some of the information may violate regulations.

It isn't clear how many groups and individuals were snagged by CIFA's dragnet, Newsweek said, though they include Quakers and students.

Vice President Dick Cheney last week called the program "vital" to the country's defense against al-Qaida. "Either we are serious about fighting this war on terror or not," he said in a speech to the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank.





© Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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Democrats to Press Bush on Domestic Spying
By HOPE YEN, Associated Press


Several lawmakers said Sunday they will press President Bush to justify his decision to allow domestic eavesdropping, rebuffing GOP suggestions their criticism of broad executive authority puts the nation at risk.

During the Sunday talk shows, lawmakers were responding to efforts by White House aide Karl Rove to make national security the top partisan issue in the November midterm elections. Rove made the comments about the time that new audiotape warnings by Osama bin Laden were released, threatening an upcoming attack on the U.S.

"I think Karl Rove made a big mistake last Friday to use this issue as his opening salvo to Republican operatives," said Rep. Jane Harman (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., the senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee.

"The terrorists aren't going to check our party registration before they blow us up. ...We're under attack as America," she said on ABC's "This Week."

"The NSA's terrorist surveillance program is targeted at al-Qaida communications coming into or going out of the United States," White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan said in a statement later Sunday. "It is a limited, hot pursuit effort by our intelligence community to detect and prevent attacks."

He accused Democrats of making "misleading and outlandish charges about this vital tool that helps us do exactly what the 9/11 Commission said we needed to do connect the dots."

Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), R-Ariz., appearing on "Fox News Sunday," said the new threats emphasize a greater need for Bush to fully consult with lawmakers from both parties on the best strategy for spy programs within the confines of the law.

"Do I think that the president's leadership has been worthy of support of our party and our leadership? Yes," McCain said.

But McCain questioned efforts to paint Democrats as weak on national security.

"There's too many good Democrats over there who are as concerned about national security and work just as hard as I do," McCain said.

On Friday, Rove outlined a blueprint for Republicans to prevail in the midterm elections, suggesting that Democrats have undermined anti-terror efforts by questioning Bush's authority to allow wiretapping without getting court approval first.

Bush has cited a congressional resolution passed after Sept. 11, 2001 that authorized him to use force in the fight against terrorism as allowing him to order the program. The program allows eavesdropping of international phone calls and e-mails of people deemed a terror risk.

Several lawmakers from both parties, including McCain and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, have questioned the program's legality because Bush did not get court approval nor fully consult with Congress. Specter's committee will hold a hearing Feb. 6.

On Sunday, some Republicans echoed Rove's anti-terror themes, arguing that Bush should have broad power even if the 2001 congressional resolution did not expressly authorize or otherwise notify lawmakers of the domestic spying.

Sen. George Allen (news, bio, voting record), R-Va., who is considered a possible 2008 presidential contender, said there are many security measures he doesn't know — and shouldn't know — because it could risk alerting the enemy.

"Neither did I know what sort of intercepts or communications of financial assistance or other things that I don't know about," he said.

Allen cited in particular the new bin Laden tape which surfaced last week as evidence that the terror cells might exist in the U.S. and might be preparing to attack should law enforcement officials let their guard down.

"I find nothing wrong with having a hearing. This maybe ought to be something that you would ratify — yes, the president has this authority," Allen said on CNN's "Late Edition."

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. said Rove is being divisive by seeking to exploit the terror threat for political gain. Wartime should not give a president unchecked authority, he said on ABC's "This Week."

"You know, Osama bin Laden is going to die of kidney failure before he's killed by Karl Rove and his crowd," Kerry said. "We're prepared to eavesdrop wherever and whenever necessary in order to make America safer. But we need to put a procedure in place to protect the constitutional rights of Americans."



Copyright © 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.


Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

Bush's Catch-22

We only spy of al-Queda-related calls.

We won't prove it because it's secret.

Trust me.

F*ck You.

--------------------
Lawmakers Debate New Limits on Spying
--------------------

Members of both parties say Congress should have a larger part in deciding how domestic surveillance is run.

By Paul Richter
Times Staff Writer

January 23 2006

WASHINGTON Lawmakers of both parties Sunday called for Congress to consider whether new restrictions were needed on government surveillance in suspected terrorism cases involving people in the United States.

The complete article can be viewed at:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...0,5286850.story

Snuffy posted this the other day
Bush Leads Defense of NSA Domestic Spying :

The Bush administration is opening a campaign to push back against criticism of its domestic spying program, ahead of congressional hearings into whether President Bush has the legal authority to eavesdrop on Americans.
http://tinyurl.com/87gcw

----------------------
Bush is giving a speech today in Kansas; he is to take questions from a friendly audience
Gonzalez is speaking on Tuesday or Wednesday
The second highest intelligence officer spoke today in washington; he took questions; didn't give many answers; he was in charge of NSA at the time Bush bypassed FISA
Cheney is speaking today also?

All will justify the WH actions; they feel they have the poll numbers behind them.

Andrea Mitchell, MSNBC, just reiterated the NSA officer's speech; she didn't discuss the audience questions.

He said if they had the program before 9-11, they could have caught the 9-11 hijackers. This is replaying on CNN over and over.

That is bunk because the CIA knew about the 2 in California and didn't tell the FBI and Bush got a report in 8/01 and din't tell any other agency.

Bush is speaking in Kansas - now on CNN -

the terrorists want a totalitarian world; "they have an ideology and a strategy to implement their ideology... " [don't you too Mr. Bush????]... my decision right off the bat was that "we will find them and hunt them down"... "it requires a different kind of response...";

going to war is the last resort but ...the consequences of not acting against this enemy meant I was not doing my job... so we sent our men an women into harms way, ......

all volunteers... the best way to keep all volunteers.. is to keep then well paid and equipped with the best equipment.... [ why do they still not have armored vests and vehicles???]

its a different kind of war... we need to understand our enemy, take their words seriously... if you harbor a terrorist, then you are equally guilty of being a terrorist.. in case you weren't paying attention....Afghanistan was a safe haven for the terrrorists... now there is a fledgling democracy

because oceans no longer protect us, the US must confron threats before it cause us harm. Threats must be taken seriously because geography doesn't protect us..

I saw a threat in Saddam Hussein... their was an immediate threat because he was shooting at our airplanes, which was a threat to our troops... he was a state sponsor of terror.., he had used weapons of mass destruction... the world thought he had weapons of mass desrtuction, myy predecessor thought eh had them... the last option is to send our troops into combat... we tried to solve it by diploatic means... I also gave a speech to the UN... how many resolutions will it take before the workd take this threat seriously... disarm, disclose or face serious consequences... Saddam chose war....

It is in no doubt in my mind that the world is safer for it... you can disagree.. but understand the consequence of succes in Iraq.... "a country where terrorists and Saddamists can't threaten the people, where they can't plan attacks against US people"... political and security plan... some people take it for granted... that people were under a tyrant to where they have voted....

What a hyppocrite!

He just said he will not listen to polls; he will listen to the troops on the ground in Iraq. They cannot defeat us militarily. We will not lose our will to these thugs and murderers. The long term is to spread liberty to achive peace.

[The WH is using the polls to go out and do these speeches this week. Rove said over the weekend that the polls show they still have the upper hand on terrorism. Also why are we still dropping 500 pound bombs in Iraq?]

Bush Launches Administration's Defense of Domestic Spy Program
By VOA News
23 January 2006

President Bush will defend his controversial domestic spying program Monday during a speech at a university in the midwestern U.S. state of Kansas.

The president's speech is part of an intense effort by the administration to convince the nation that the program is a necessary tool to fight terrorism.

The former head of the National Security Agency, General Michael Hayden, will also deliver a speech today defending the program. And Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will address the issue Tuesday, one day before President Bush visits NSA headquarters near Washington.

Mr. Bush has come under fire for authorizing the NSA to conduct electronic surveillance on U.S. citizens without first getting permission from a special court.

Opposition Democrats, along with members of the president's own Republican Party, have questioned the legality of the program.

Some information for this report was provided by AP.

Bush is taking "planted" questions from the audience.

Kansas meat industry praised him
Sudan
Iran- China -- we will not be blackmailed with a nuclear threat

nothing about NSA wiretaps.

The former head of the National Security Agency, General Michael Hayden, will also deliver a speech today defending the program.

That is who I mentioned above.

http://www.c-span.com

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

Another plant:

Iraqi Kurd thanked Bush for freeing her people. Saddam burned villages. Stop questioning the administration's decision!!!! Bush joked... "this is a question and answer session... what is your question?"

UK citizen is asking a question now:

"when you say jump, Blair says how high?. He is a "yes man" to you. Have you discussed that with him?


He is not a yes man... an independent thinker.. he doesn't deserve that criticism. We share core beliefs; we disagree- Kyoto and International criminal court; I'm sorry if I cause leaders problems overseas...sometimes I can a little "allergic to people overseas"; when you make hard decisions, it creates angst.

another forum:

http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...ST&f=16&t=47694

ROTC person:

How do you prepare for your attacks on your character?

Bush Says Good Intel Needed to Find Enemy

Updated 1:28 PM ET January 23, 2006
http://dailynews.att.net/cgi-bin/news?e=pr...8fai0pg0&src=ap

MANHATTAN, Kan. (AP) - President Bush said that those seeking to attack the United States cannot be appeased and terrorists must be destroyed.

Speaking at Kansas State University, the president said that the war on terror is an "ideological struggle" against an enemy that has a "view of the world that is the exact opposite of our view of the world."

"The United States must confront threats before they cause us harm," he said.

Bush reiterated his belief in preemptive action to thwart threats to the United States and he again defended his decision to go to war in Iraq and oust Saddam Hussein as a necessary part of the war on terror.

Bush, speaking in Manhattan, Kan., is expected to make a point of defending his secret domestic eavesdropping program. It's part of a new administration effort to convince Americans that the National Security Agency's communications spying program is necessary to fight terrorism.

The public relations campaign comes two weeks before congressional hearings to examine the top-secret program, disclosed last month by The New York Times, are set to begin. Critics have said the president broke the law by authorizing the eavesdropping without a judge's approval and by failing to fully consult with Congress.

As part of that campaign, presidential adviser Dan Bartlett made a pitch for the surveillance program Monday morning on network television news shows. He insisted that Bush was "not bypassing the law. In fact, we're interpreting the law correctly."

"It would be our choice to not to have to talk about this at all," he said on ABC's "Good Morning America."

___

On the Net:

http://www.whitehouse.gov

what a joke

Bush to Take Unscripted Audience Questions

Updated 1:46 PM ET January 23, 2006
http://dailynews.att.net/cgi-bin/news?e=pr...123_520&src=abc

Move over, Oprah. President Bush is making himself into television's newest talk show host by making audience participation a feature of his appearances.

Bush has been taking questions from audience members in recent speeches, and the White House says none has been prescreened. The sessions are not open to the public, but instead limited to invited groups. It's a throwback to the folksy style on the campaign trail that helped him win re-election and a departure from the heavily scripted speeches that were the norm last year.

And his answers have resulted in some revelations both personal and political.

The White House has grown so comfortable with the format that most of his appearance Monday at Kansas State University scheduled for 12:30 p.m. ET was reserved for Q-and-A with the audience.

And unlike the more intimate settings where the president has taken questions before, this appearance was set in front of a coliseum full of several thousands, including students, soldiers from nearby Fort Riley and invited guests.

Bush has taken a wide variety of questions in three appearances during the last six weeks. Many of the people he has called on have fawned over him, thanking him for his wartime leadership, saying they pray for him and bringing best wishes from other fans in their family who couldn't be there.

"It's always good to have a plant in every audience," Bush joked last week in Sterling, Va., after a woman rose and said she was proud of him.

But he has gotten some tough questions, too, such as the one from a woman in Philadelphia last month who challenged the administration's linkage of the Iraq war to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Bush said Saddam Hussein was a threat and at the time was widely believed to have weapons of mass destruction which later proved false.

In response to another question in Philadelphia, he estimated 30,000 Iraqis had died in the war, the first time he publicly put a number on Iraqi deaths. In Louisville, Ky., he signaled that after initial reservations, he was resigned to congressional hearings into his domestic spying program as long as they don't aid the enemy.

He has spoken about one of the worst things about being president exposing his daughters to public scrutiny and one of the best impressing his childhood friends with dinner at the White House.

"It's a great honor, pretty awe-inspiring deal," Bush said in Virginia. "They walk in there and, kind of (say), `What are you doing here, Bush?'"

He also ruled out any future run for office by his wife, Laura, in response to a plea from a fan who called her "one of the best first ladies we've ever had." And he disclosed that Mrs. Bush designed the rug in the Oval Office.

"I said, I want it to say `optimistic person comes here to work every day,'" the president said. "It was the strategic thought for the rug. She figured out the colors. And it looks like a sun, with nice, open colors."

Bush was opening Monday's event in Manhattan, Kan. by talking about the war on terror and making a point of defending his secret domestic eavesdropping program. It's part of a new administration effort to convince Americans that the National Security Agency's communications spying program is necessary to fight terrorism.

The public relations campaign comes two weeks before congressional hearings to examine the top-secret program, disclosed last month by The New York Times, are set to begin. Critics have said the president broke the law by authorizing the eavesdropping without a judge's approval and by failing to fully consult with Congress.

As part of that campaign, presidential adviser Dan Bartlett made a pitch for the surveillance program Monday morning on network television news shows.

"The very reason to do this is that the dots weren't connected before 9/11, to make sure we know if plans or operations are under way to attack our country again," he said on CBS's "The Early Show."

Bartlett insisted that Bush was "not bypassing the law. In fact, we're interpreting the law correctly."

"It would be our choice to not to have to talk about this at all," he said on ABC's "Good Morning America."

While the president was heading for Kansas, anti-abortion activists were gathering in Washington and elsewhere to protest the 33rd anniversary of the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. As he has in past years, Bush planned to call in his support rather than attend in person.


On the Net:

http://www.whitehouse.gov

Administration Defends Wiretapping

Updated 2:03 PM ET January 23, 2006
http://dailynews.att.net/cgi-bin/news?e=pr..._060123&src=abc

In the face of growing debate about the president's domestic wiretapping program, White House counsel Dan Bartlett said that the program was vital and within the president's constitutional authority. "It's a program to make sure that we connect the dots," Bartlett said in an interview on "Good Morning America." "It's not some sort of roving domestic spying program. It's a carefully tailored program to survey the enemy." The program, in which agents from the National Security Agency monitor phone calls within the United States to try to identify possible terror threats, first came to light when the New York Times wrote a story about it based on leaked information. Since then, a firestorm of controversy has surrounded the wiretapping program, even though officials from the Bush administration maintain that both Democrats and Republicans in Congress have known about the program for four years. Some top Democrats, including former vice president and presidential candidate Al Gore, have said that President Bush is breaking the law by monitoring domestic phone calls without a warrant. Critics argue that the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 allows the gathering of "foreign intelligence information" between or among "foreign powers," but not people within the United States. In 2001, FISA was rolled into the Patriot Act and modified to include terrorists who were not necessarily backed by a foreign government. The president is supposed to authorize the surveillance through the attorney general -- in essence, get a warrant.


Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said that if Bush needed the law to be modified to protect the country, "then come to us and tell us. ... There is a way to protect the Constitution and not go off on your own and violate it."

The Senate Judiciary Committee, lead by Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., will hold a hearing on the program in February.

In response, the administration has launched a full court press to turn the wiretapping issue into a political asset. On Friday, the president's chief adviser, Karl Rove, delivered a scathing speech that implied that Democrats who questioned the wiretapping program were not willing to fully protect Americans from another Sept. 11. This week, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, a former head of the NSA, will speak out in favor of the program. On Wednesday, Bush will visit the NSA.

Bartlett said that, had the story not been leaked, the wiretapping program would continue unimpeded and would not be an issue.

"It would be our choice not to have to talk about this at all, but the fact of the matter is that it was leaked to the New York Times," Bartlett said.

But since the program has come to light, even some Republicans have expressed doubt about its legality. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said that the president should have approached Congress about his plans and that he most likely would have gotten approval. Not consulting with the legislative branch is overzealous on the part of the executive branch, he said.

If that is not enough for the administration, Time magazine recently said it had five pictures of the president with embattled lobbyist Jack Abramoff, even though the president said that he did not know him.

Bartlett said that there was no nefarious connection between the two and that the president most likely posed for a picture with Abramoff at a fund-raising event, which is routine.

Bartlett maintained that the president had behaved perfectly legally, both where Abramoff and the NSA were concerned.

"We do have the legal authority to do what we are doing," Bartlett said. "We have the necessity to do what we are doing."

Bush Says Surveillance Legal and Necessary

Updated 2:36 PM ET January 23, 2006
http://dailynews.att.net/cgi-bin/news?e=pr...8faj0o01&src=ap

By NEDRA PICKLER

MANHATTAN, Kan. (AP) - President Bush on Monday rejected critics' assertion that he broke the law by authorizing domestic eavesdropping without a warrant, saying he was doing what Congress authorized him to do to protect Americans from terrorist attacks.

With congressional hearings set to begin on this issue Feb. 6, Bush kicked his administration's new intensive public relations effort to win support for the program run by the National Security Agency. As part of that, he gave it a new label _ the Terrorist Surveillance Program.

Bush noted that hearings will open in Congress soon, and Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., who accompanied the president here, was among the lawmakers on Capitol Hill who were given regular updates about the surveillance by the White House. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., chairman of the Judiciary Committee, will preside over the hearings.

"It's amazing that people say to me, `Well, he's just breaking the law," the president said, with Roberts sitting behind him on stage at Kansas State University. "If I wanted to break the law, why was I briefing Congress?"

Bush said the spying program was targeted at communications between people in the United States and al Qaida associates overseas. He said he made sure he was acting within the law before authorizing the program after his aides suggested it.

"I'm mindful of your civil liberties and so I had all kinds of lawyers review the process," Bush told some 9,000 students, soldiers and dignitaries in the audience.

Critics have said the president broke the law by authorizing the eavesdropping without a judge's approval and by failing to fully consult with Congress. The White House told congressional leadership about the program, but not all members of the intelligence committees.

Bush said a congressional resolution passed after Sept. 11, 2001, that authorized him to use force in the fight against terrorism, also allowed him to order the top-secret program. That operation was disclosed last month by The New York Times.

"Congress gave me the authority to use necessary force to protect the American people, but it didn't prescribe the tactics," Bush said, adding that the government needs to know why people linked to al Qaida are calling into the U.S. "One of the ways to protect the American people is to understand the intentions of the enemy."

A majority of Americans _ 56 percent _ said the Bush administration should be required to get a warrant before monitoring electronic communications between American citizens and suspected terrorists, according to an AP-Ipsos poll earlier this month.

When people have been asked in other polls to balance their worries about terrorist threats against their worries about intrusions on privacy, fighting terror is the higher priority.

Bush's appearance was the fourth in the last six weeks in which he's taken questions from the audience. But Kansas State offered the largest audience yet, with a coliseum full of roughly 9,000 people who got tickets distributed by the university. Six thousand were students, 800 were soldiers from nearby Fort Riley who just returned from Iraq, officials said.

The White House says none of the questions was prescreened. The site chosen for Monday's event, however, was in friendly Bush territory in the reliably "red" state of Kansas.

Bush received a hero's welcome, with long standing ovations and loud applause as he defended his most controversial positions. There was a noisy crowd of a couple hundred sign-waving anti-war protesters outside the arena where Bush appeared. "Wage war, not peace!" they chanted to a drumbeat.

While the president was in Kansas, anti-abortion activists were gathering in Washington and elsewhere to protest the 33rd anniversary of the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. As he has in past years, Bush called in his support rather than attend in person.

___

On the Net:

http://www.whitehouse.gov

Poll: Broader Concern on Privacy Rights, But Terrorism Threat Still Trumps

Updated 2:50 PM ET January 23, 2006
http://dailynews.att.net/cgi-bin/news?e=pr..._060110&src=abc

Three in 10 Americans believe the federal government has made unjustified intrusions into personal privacy as it investigates terrorism. That's nearly double the level of concern shown a few years ago, but it's still far from a majority view.

More broadly, the public still grants investigating terrorism a higher priority than guarding privacy rights, but by somewhat less of a margin than in the past. And Americans divide about evenly on the specific issue of warrantless wiretaps by the National Security Agency: Fifty-one percent call them acceptable in investigating terrorism, 47 percent unacceptable -- views that are marked by huge partisan and ideological gaps.

Separately, this ABC News/Washington Post poll finds George W. Bush's overall job rating unchanged after a gain following the Iraqi elections last month. Forty-six percent of Americans approve of his work in office, while 52 percent disapprove. That's almost identical to the mid-December rating, but better than his low approval rating (39 percent) last fall.


The war in Iraq continues to weigh on Bush -- 55 percent say it was not worth fighting, a view that's maintained by a majority in polls since December 2004. And a tepid 53 percent approve of the way Bush has handled the U.S. campaign against terrorism, long the key to his support and indeed to his re-election in 2004.

PRIVACY -- Results in this survey indicate some shifts in the tug-of-war between investigating terrorism and protecting privacy. While still heavily outnumbered, those who call privacy a greater concern have increased from 21 percent in September 2003 to 32 percent now. And as noted, the number of Americans who believe the government is intruding on privacy without justification has risen from 17 percent to 30 percent.

That said, security concerns still trump: Sixty-five percent say it's more important for the government to investigate terrorism than for it to protect privacy (down, though, from a high of 79 percent in June 2002). Despite the NSA revelations, as many say they're worried that Bush will not do enough to investigate terrorism (48 percent) as are worried that he'll go too far in compromising constitutional rights (44 percent).

These results don't mean Americans don't value their privacy or constitutional rights; they suggest instead that most see security as a competing right -- one that, since Sept. 11, 2001, has commanded considerable clout.

As things stand, Americans by 48 percent say that as the government investigates terrorism it is doing enough, rather than not enough, to protect the rights of American citizens (8 percent say it's doing too much). The divisions are about the same when it comes to the rights of people suspected of terrorist involvement.

PARTISAN -- Some of these issues engender sharp ideological and partisan differences, with Republicans and conservatives more concerned about terrorism than about privacy rights, and Democrats and liberals, in particular, in the opposite camp. Republicans by 84 percent percent say it's more important right now to investigate possible terrorist threats, even if that intrudes on privacy, than not to intrude on privacy if that limits the ability to investigate possible terrorist acts. Most independents agree, but by a 2-1 margin rather than the Republicans' nearly 6-1 margin. Democrats divide about evenly. The divisions among conservatives, moderates and liberals are similar.


More Important Right Now
Investigate terrorism , Protect privacy
All 65% 32%
Democrats 51% 47%
Independents 64% 34%
Republicans 84% 15%
Liberals 49% 49%
Moderates 65% 33%
Conservatives 76% 21%


In another difference, Republicans and conservatives, given their support for the administration, are much less likely to say the government is intruding on privacy rights; or, if they believe it's doing so, to see such intrusions as unjustified.


Is the Government Intruding on Privacy Rights?
Yes, and not justified , Yes, but justified, No, not intruding

All 30% 31% 32%
Democrats 45% 25% 25%
Independents 33% 31% 27%
Republicans 8% 41% 45%
Liberals 49% 25% 20%
Moderates 49% 25% 20%
Conservatives 15% 30% 48%

[conservatives are brainwashed]

January 23, 2006
White House Begins New Effort to Defend Surveillance Program
By DAVID E. SANGER and JOHN O'NEIL
MANHATTAN, Kan., Jan. 23 - President Bush today opened what amounts to a weeklong media blitz against criticism of the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping program, calling it a "terrorist surveillance program" that had saved lives.

Mr. Bush hotly denied charges that he had done anything illegal by authorizing the warrantless eavesdropping program. "If I wanted to break the law," he told an audience at Kansas State University, "why was I briefing Congress?"

Earlier in the day, in Washington, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who led the National Security Agency when it began the warrantless wiretaps, vigorously defended the program , though he acknowledged that it depended on a lower standard of evidence than required by courts.

"The trigger is quicker and a bit softer," said General Hayden, an Air Force officer who is now the principal deputy director of the new national intelligence agency, "but the intrusion into privacy is also limited: only international calls and only those we have a reasonable basis to believe involve Al Qaeda or one of its affiliates."

The standard laid out by General Hayden - a "reasonable basis to believe" - is lower than "probable cause," the standard used by the special court created by Congress to handle surveillance involving foreign intelligence.

General Hayden said that warrantless searches are conducted when one of a "handful" of senior officers at the security agency determines that there is a "reasonable belief" that one party to a call between someone in America and someone overseas has a link to Al Qaeda.

The session, at the National Press Club, was remarkable in that it featured a former director of the super-secret N.S.A. discussing at length what administration officials say is probably the most highly classified program in the government.

In his speech this afternoon, President Bush, who was accompanied by the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, also said that decisions to begin wiretaps without court approval were based on a reasonable belief of a link to terrorists.