Lawmaker Questions Value of Spy Program
By NEDRA PICKLER, Associated Press Writer
Mon Feb 13, 2:01 AM ET
Nearly two months of public debate on President Bush's eavesdropping program has probably harmed its goal of detecting terrorist plots, says a congressman overseeing U.S. intelligence.
"The problem now is the program really of questionable value," House Intelligence Committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."
"It's been across the media for the last 50 days. Does anyone really believe that, after 50 days of having this program on the front page of our newspapers, across talk shows across America, that al-Qaida has not changed the way that it communicates?"
Bush said in his State of the Union address two weeks ago that the once top-secret program "remains essential to the security of America" despite its revelation Dec. 16 by The New York Times.
Since that disclosure, legal scholars and lawmakers from both parties have questioned whether Bush had the authority to conduct the surveillance without a judge's approval.
By law, a special Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is designed to grant warrants for such surveillance. Bush gave the National Security Agency approval to monitor the communications without taking that step.
Hoekstra defended the program's legal standing. He said if Democrats who were briefed on the program before it became public thought Bush was breaking the law, they should have tried to stop him.
"If I came out of that briefing and believed that the president was violating the law, I would have gone to the speaker and said, `Mr. Speaker, the president's violating the law,'" Hoekstra said. "`You and I need to go see the president and talk to him and get this issue resolved do it now.'"
Rep. Jane Harman (news, bio, voting record) of California, senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said she did not fully understand the legal underpinnings of the program at the time of the classified briefings and was not free to consult with experts.
Since the monitoring has become public, she has argued that Bush broke the law by failing to consult all the members of the congressional intelligence panels, instead of just the leaders.
"Remember, we go into those briefings alone," Harman said. "We have no ability to consult staff. We have no ability to consult constitutional experts or legal experts on the history of FISA (the special court). Since the program has been disclosed, I think all of us, or at least I, have become a lot smarter about all of that."
Hoekstra and Harman appeared with two others who were among the few leading lawmakers to be briefed on the program before it became public: Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., and former Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakota, who was the Senate Democratic leader.
The two Republicans — Hoekstra and Roberts — said Congress does not need to pass further legislation granting specific authority to conduct the eavesdropping because the president was given that power under a resolution passed four days after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks authorizing action against the al-Qaida terror network.
Both Democrats — Harman and Daschle — said they think the program is valuable and should continue, but that the law should be changed to allow it.
Meantime, Sen. Joseph Biden (news, bio, voting record), D-Del., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the eavesdropping program should not continue "unabated without any review."
The intelligence committees of Congress should demand to know, in secret session, what the administration is doing, said Biden. He said he supports a proposal by the committee chairman, Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa., to have the FISA court review the eavesdropping program and decide whether it is legal.
"We cannot say to a president, 'Mr. President, whatever you want to do, under any circumstances, tap anything, and you don't even have to tell us what you're doing.' That is bizarre," Biden said on ABC's "This Week."
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.
Full Version: Bush Permitted NSA to Spy on Americans
Common Ground Common Sense > Issues that Affect Our Lives > Foreign Policy and National Defense > Foreign Policy & National Defense Issues Archive
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From Phrenology to Data Mining
How Not to Spot a Terrorist
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Paranoid America – by which I mean its governors – has long dreamed of foolproof technology to guard the Homeland from subversion, or penetration by alien hostiles.
In its latest variant, the vaunted technology comes in the form of the sweeps by the computers of the National Security Agency, programmed to intercept hundreds of millions of phone, email and fax messages. These days, as much as a third of global communications are on fiber-optic cable routes that pass through the United States.
The NSA’s programmers claim that the artificial intelligence programs – terabytes of speech, text, and image data – monitoring the filters are of such refinement that they can determine the sex, age and class of the communicators and, no doubt (though they take care not to boast of any such profiling), their genetic and linguistic ethnicity too. After all, Middle Easterners are surely a prime target.
A very useful story in the Washington Post for February 5, headlined “Surveillance Net Yields Few Subjects”, cites “knowledgeable sources” as saying about 5,000 Americans have had their conversations recorded or emails read without court authority. Of these, less than 10 U.S. citizens or residents a year “have aroused enough suspicion during warrantless eavesdropping to justify interception of their domestic calls, as well.”
Such intercepts would require a warrant from a judge, with the request couched in terms of probable cause, usually defined as being a one-in-two chance of the suspicions being justified. So clearly a final cull of ten or so a year out of hundreds of thousands or, more likely, tens of millions means the “probable cause” standard was tossed aside.
So, “data mining” by artificially programmed computers is a proceeding that is not only constitutionally illegal but a technological fantasy. The Post quotes Jeff Jonas, now chief scientist at IBM Entity Analytics, as saying pattern-matching techniques that "look at people's behavior to predict terrorist intent are so far from reaching the level of accuracy that's necessary that I see them as nothing but civil liberty infringement engines."
Every era produces its techno-Panglosses, eager to guard America, and demanding torrents of public money to that end. In Reagan-time it was the Strategic Defense Initiative, with missiles programmed to launch on warning that enemy warheads were plummeting into the Homeland. Long since discredited by one series of failed tests after another, this souvenir of Reagan-time still marches expensively through the Defense Budget.
That spasm of military Keynesianism has thus far merely cost money. Back in the early part of the twentieth century the data-miners and SDI fantasists had their equivalents in men of intellectual eminence who successfully agitated for filters to be installed at America’s ports of entry to detect genetic terrorists, i.e., people of bloodstock deemed by the fearful eugenicists to be a threat to America’s gene pool.
The U.S. Immigration Act of 1924 sanctioned the use of the bogus U.S. Army IQ scores of World War I promoted by eugenic racists) to “scientifically verify” the supposed hereditary mental inferiority of Jews, Italians, Poles, Hungarians, Spaniards, and other non Anglo-Saxon Protestant racial and ethnic groups.
The screening was designed to address the fears expressed in Charles Davenport’s influential bestseller of 1911, Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, where he prophesied that if unchecked by genetic national security agents, “the population of the United States will, on account of the great influx of blood from South-Eastern Europe, rapidly become darker in pigmentation, smaller in stature, more mercurial, more attached to music and art, more given to crimes of larceny, kidnapping, assault, and vagrancy than were the original English settlers.”
Davenport even wanted to send eugenics inspects to Europe to examine all would-be immigrants for genetic flaws. In the end, this task passed to his German admirers.
In his great 1975 tract, The Legacy of Malthus, Allan Chase, narrating this shameful story, asks the question, how many of the 6,065,704 would-be immigrants excluded by racial quotas set by the eugenicists survived the war? For sure, most of the Jews, Poles and Russians identified by the Nazis (using U.S. eugenic “science”) were rounded up and exterminated.
To the phrenologists, genetic data miners, we can add the forensic fingerprinters. I’ve long believed that the “scientific certainty” of unique fingerprint matching is mostly theater, using suspect forensic work to bewitch judge and jury, as it has for over a hundred years. Fingerprinting be it recalled, was first sold as a crime-fighting tool by Charles Darwin’s cousin, Ernest Galton, a fervent eugenicist.
In 2004 the FBI’s top fingerprint analysts, subsequently buttressed by an outside “forensic expert”, insisted that a print lifted from a bag at the scene of the Madrid terror bombing in that year was “a 100 per cent match” with one of 20 sets of prints spat out by the FBI’s integrated, automated, fingerprint identification system (IAFIS) containing a database of some 20 million fingerprints. (To be fair to the IAFIS computer system, it said, “close, no match)
The print thrown up by the FBI’s computer belonged to the left index finger of Brandon Mayfield, a lawyer working in Beaverton, Oregon. A judge in Portland duly acknowledged probable cause in signing a warrant for surveillance of Mayfield. He was spied upon and arrested. All the while, the Spanish police were insisting that there was no match between Mayfield’s print and the one in the van, which they determined belonged to the right middle finger of Ouhnane Daoud, an Algerian national living in Spain, whom they duly arrested. Mayfield, who was nowhere near Spain when the bombs went off, went free.
The claims of scientific precision are as suspect today as they were a century ago when Davenport was laboring on his racist tract and the sterilizers mustering strength here in America.
These days we have data mining, “100 per cent certain” DNA hits, retinal ID, face recognition systems. Elementary constitutional protections get swept aside. As they reviewed the NSA data mining, a prime concern of the Democrats was the potential liability of U.S. phone carriers (who poured money into their campaign treasuries in 1996 to purchase telecommunications “reform”). They didn’t question the very premises of the data mining. Is this strange? Not in a world where the New York Times can publish an article, as it did on February 8, on the Democrats’ failure to gain popular traction, in which the difficult words “war” and “Iraq” never intruded.
Shameful Danish Record
Danes are being treated as inoffensive folk unwittingly caught up in row over cartoons. History tells a different tale.
In the ancient town of Canterbury, England, the medieval glass windows of the Cathedral relate shocking behavior of Danes in the early 11th century. The Danes are shown besieging Canterbury in 1011 despite having been paid Danegeld, the ransom extorted by the marauding Danes, payment of which was meant to spare towns unfortunate to find themselves targeted by these predators.
Canterbury fell and massacre ensued. Alphege, the Archbishop of Canterbury, sought to dissuade Danes from killing everybody. He was taken hostage and ransom was demanded. Alphege refused to allow the poor of Canterbury to pay it. He was taken to Greenwich and then murdered by drunken Danes who hurled bones at him at a feast and then killed him with an axe.
Alphege was buried first in St Paul's but but his body was moved back to Canterbury under King Canute, presumably seeking closure. Alphege was later sanctified and was Canterbury's big selling point to attract pilgrims until Thomas a Becket.
Danes didn't behave too well in Ireland either. When I was growing in East Cork, we didn’t have to travel far to see the sad relicts of their predations. Many was the picnic we enjoyed amid the ruins of Molanna Abbey, on the west bank of the Blackwater, where the waters would sluice out through the fish-traps designed by the monks who kept the lamps of learning alight in those dark times, till the arrival of the brutish Danes.
So there are those who simply think – high matters of “blasphemy” aside – that when it comes to rough treatment of embassies and the rights of diplomatic sanctuary, not to mention physical maltreatment ofGod’s terrestial representatives, the Danes had it coming to them.
Though the colonial era does not show many pages devoted to Danish excesses, there hints that of what might have been. Denmark’s only overseas possessions, for a limited period, was the island of St Croix, birthplace of Alexander Hamilton. When the Danish flag was briefly hoisted over the island, the Danes lost no time in imposing the Gavilon Code, setting forth the work and taxes too be extorted from the locals by the Danish oppressor. Historians mark it as one of the cruelest in the entire annals of empire.
Footnote: an earlier version of the first item ran in the print edition of The Nation that went to press last Wednesday
From Phrenology to Data Mining
How Not to Spot a Terrorist
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
Paranoid America – by which I mean its governors – has long dreamed of foolproof technology to guard the Homeland from subversion, or penetration by alien hostiles.
In its latest variant, the vaunted technology comes in the form of the sweeps by the computers of the National Security Agency, programmed to intercept hundreds of millions of phone, email and fax messages. These days, as much as a third of global communications are on fiber-optic cable routes that pass through the United States.
The NSA’s programmers claim that the artificial intelligence programs – terabytes of speech, text, and image data – monitoring the filters are of such refinement that they can determine the sex, age and class of the communicators and, no doubt (though they take care not to boast of any such profiling), their genetic and linguistic ethnicity too. After all, Middle Easterners are surely a prime target.
A very useful story in the Washington Post for February 5, headlined “Surveillance Net Yields Few Subjects”, cites “knowledgeable sources” as saying about 5,000 Americans have had their conversations recorded or emails read without court authority. Of these, less than 10 U.S. citizens or residents a year “have aroused enough suspicion during warrantless eavesdropping to justify interception of their domestic calls, as well.”
Such intercepts would require a warrant from a judge, with the request couched in terms of probable cause, usually defined as being a one-in-two chance of the suspicions being justified. So clearly a final cull of ten or so a year out of hundreds of thousands or, more likely, tens of millions means the “probable cause” standard was tossed aside.
So, “data mining” by artificially programmed computers is a proceeding that is not only constitutionally illegal but a technological fantasy. The Post quotes Jeff Jonas, now chief scientist at IBM Entity Analytics, as saying pattern-matching techniques that "look at people's behavior to predict terrorist intent are so far from reaching the level of accuracy that's necessary that I see them as nothing but civil liberty infringement engines."
Every era produces its techno-Panglosses, eager to guard America, and demanding torrents of public money to that end. In Reagan-time it was the Strategic Defense Initiative, with missiles programmed to launch on warning that enemy warheads were plummeting into the Homeland. Long since discredited by one series of failed tests after another, this souvenir of Reagan-time still marches expensively through the Defense Budget.
That spasm of military Keynesianism has thus far merely cost money. Back in the early part of the twentieth century the data-miners and SDI fantasists had their equivalents in men of intellectual eminence who successfully agitated for filters to be installed at America’s ports of entry to detect genetic terrorists, i.e., people of bloodstock deemed by the fearful eugenicists to be a threat to America’s gene pool.
The U.S. Immigration Act of 1924 sanctioned the use of the bogus U.S. Army IQ scores of World War I promoted by eugenic racists) to “scientifically verify” the supposed hereditary mental inferiority of Jews, Italians, Poles, Hungarians, Spaniards, and other non Anglo-Saxon Protestant racial and ethnic groups.
The screening was designed to address the fears expressed in Charles Davenport’s influential bestseller of 1911, Heredity in Relation to Eugenics, where he prophesied that if unchecked by genetic national security agents, “the population of the United States will, on account of the great influx of blood from South-Eastern Europe, rapidly become darker in pigmentation, smaller in stature, more mercurial, more attached to music and art, more given to crimes of larceny, kidnapping, assault, and vagrancy than were the original English settlers.”
Davenport even wanted to send eugenics inspects to Europe to examine all would-be immigrants for genetic flaws. In the end, this task passed to his German admirers.
In his great 1975 tract, The Legacy of Malthus, Allan Chase, narrating this shameful story, asks the question, how many of the 6,065,704 would-be immigrants excluded by racial quotas set by the eugenicists survived the war? For sure, most of the Jews, Poles and Russians identified by the Nazis (using U.S. eugenic “science”) were rounded up and exterminated.
To the phrenologists, genetic data miners, we can add the forensic fingerprinters. I’ve long believed that the “scientific certainty” of unique fingerprint matching is mostly theater, using suspect forensic work to bewitch judge and jury, as it has for over a hundred years. Fingerprinting be it recalled, was first sold as a crime-fighting tool by Charles Darwin’s cousin, Ernest Galton, a fervent eugenicist.
In 2004 the FBI’s top fingerprint analysts, subsequently buttressed by an outside “forensic expert”, insisted that a print lifted from a bag at the scene of the Madrid terror bombing in that year was “a 100 per cent match” with one of 20 sets of prints spat out by the FBI’s integrated, automated, fingerprint identification system (IAFIS) containing a database of some 20 million fingerprints. (To be fair to the IAFIS computer system, it said, “close, no match)
The print thrown up by the FBI’s computer belonged to the left index finger of Brandon Mayfield, a lawyer working in Beaverton, Oregon. A judge in Portland duly acknowledged probable cause in signing a warrant for surveillance of Mayfield. He was spied upon and arrested. All the while, the Spanish police were insisting that there was no match between Mayfield’s print and the one in the van, which they determined belonged to the right middle finger of Ouhnane Daoud, an Algerian national living in Spain, whom they duly arrested. Mayfield, who was nowhere near Spain when the bombs went off, went free.
The claims of scientific precision are as suspect today as they were a century ago when Davenport was laboring on his racist tract and the sterilizers mustering strength here in America.
These days we have data mining, “100 per cent certain” DNA hits, retinal ID, face recognition systems. Elementary constitutional protections get swept aside. As they reviewed the NSA data mining, a prime concern of the Democrats was the potential liability of U.S. phone carriers (who poured money into their campaign treasuries in 1996 to purchase telecommunications “reform”). They didn’t question the very premises of the data mining. Is this strange? Not in a world where the New York Times can publish an article, as it did on February 8, on the Democrats’ failure to gain popular traction, in which the difficult words “war” and “Iraq” never intruded.
Shameful Danish Record
Danes are being treated as inoffensive folk unwittingly caught up in row over cartoons. History tells a different tale.
In the ancient town of Canterbury, England, the medieval glass windows of the Cathedral relate shocking behavior of Danes in the early 11th century. The Danes are shown besieging Canterbury in 1011 despite having been paid Danegeld, the ransom extorted by the marauding Danes, payment of which was meant to spare towns unfortunate to find themselves targeted by these predators.
Canterbury fell and massacre ensued. Alphege, the Archbishop of Canterbury, sought to dissuade Danes from killing everybody. He was taken hostage and ransom was demanded. Alphege refused to allow the poor of Canterbury to pay it. He was taken to Greenwich and then murdered by drunken Danes who hurled bones at him at a feast and then killed him with an axe.
Alphege was buried first in St Paul's but but his body was moved back to Canterbury under King Canute, presumably seeking closure. Alphege was later sanctified and was Canterbury's big selling point to attract pilgrims until Thomas a Becket.
Danes didn't behave too well in Ireland either. When I was growing in East Cork, we didn’t have to travel far to see the sad relicts of their predations. Many was the picnic we enjoyed amid the ruins of Molanna Abbey, on the west bank of the Blackwater, where the waters would sluice out through the fish-traps designed by the monks who kept the lamps of learning alight in those dark times, till the arrival of the brutish Danes.
So there are those who simply think – high matters of “blasphemy” aside – that when it comes to rough treatment of embassies and the rights of diplomatic sanctuary, not to mention physical maltreatment ofGod’s terrestial representatives, the Danes had it coming to them.
Though the colonial era does not show many pages devoted to Danish excesses, there hints that of what might have been. Denmark’s only overseas possessions, for a limited period, was the island of St Croix, birthplace of Alexander Hamilton. When the Danish flag was briefly hoisted over the island, the Danes lost no time in imposing the Gavilon Code, setting forth the work and taxes too be extorted from the locals by the Danish oppressor. Historians mark it as one of the cruelest in the entire annals of empire.
Footnote: an earlier version of the first item ran in the print edition of The Nation that went to press last Wednesday
http://www.freemarketnews.com/WorldNews-Print.asp?nid=7404
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NSA HIRES NEWS AGENCIES
Monday, February 13, 2006 - FreeMarketNews.com
In a recent letter released under the Freedom of Information Act, the NSA Director of Policy said that the National Security Agency (NSA) has contracts to pay news agencies for information, according to Narcosphere News. However, NSA authorities refused to reveal details of the contracts or what information is being purchased.
The NSA letter gave as little information as possible, but it did reveal the names of two wire services that it is paying - Reuters and the Associated Press. In response to a request about the nature of the contracts, the letter also reportedly said, “The NSA contract with these companies precludes our release of this information. Violation of these contracts could prevent the government from obtaining similar information in the future.”
Some government agencies purchase news wire services, however the level of secrecy and defensiveness in the NSA statement has analysts concerned. If the NSA simply purchased news wire services, it would have no reason to protect that information from being released. The NSA statement may imply that the government is influencing media and free speech much more than most people perceive.
staff reports - Free-Market News Network
Web Address: http://www.FreeMarketNews.com/WorldNews.asp?nid=7404
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Selected edited commentary is posted daily with FMNN responses to the FEEDBACK section of www.FreeMarketNews.com.
Free-Market News Network does not represent, warrant, or endorse the accuracy, reliability, completeness or timeliness of any of the information, content, views, opinions, recommendations or advertisements contained on, distributed through, or linked, downloaded or accessed from any of the information contained in this News Story.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NSA HIRES NEWS AGENCIES
Monday, February 13, 2006 - FreeMarketNews.com
In a recent letter released under the Freedom of Information Act, the NSA Director of Policy said that the National Security Agency (NSA) has contracts to pay news agencies for information, according to Narcosphere News. However, NSA authorities refused to reveal details of the contracts or what information is being purchased.
The NSA letter gave as little information as possible, but it did reveal the names of two wire services that it is paying - Reuters and the Associated Press. In response to a request about the nature of the contracts, the letter also reportedly said, “The NSA contract with these companies precludes our release of this information. Violation of these contracts could prevent the government from obtaining similar information in the future.”
Some government agencies purchase news wire services, however the level of secrecy and defensiveness in the NSA statement has analysts concerned. If the NSA simply purchased news wire services, it would have no reason to protect that information from being released. The NSA statement may imply that the government is influencing media and free speech much more than most people perceive.
staff reports - Free-Market News Network
Web Address: http://www.FreeMarketNews.com/WorldNews.asp?nid=7404
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Selected edited commentary is posted daily with FMNN responses to the FEEDBACK section of www.FreeMarketNews.com.
Free-Market News Network does not represent, warrant, or endorse the accuracy, reliability, completeness or timeliness of any of the information, content, views, opinions, recommendations or advertisements contained on, distributed through, or linked, downloaded or accessed from any of the information contained in this News Story.
I have a bad feeling that Rove has scared the Dems off of this topic. When I watched the Sunday talk shows, the message seemed to be 'I support the program, but....' and that's not gonna fly.
LORD, what I wouldn't give if Dems could stay on message for more than a short time. This is a loser for Bush because as more facts come out (which they will), the public will begin to lose their initial support for spying. I firmly believe that the initial public support was a knee-jerk reaction, and that can be overcome.
But not if Dems decide that this is a loser of an issue and throw in the towel.
I hope that I'm wrong. We CANNOT allow Bush to break the law and skate clean away. So I hope that this is just the lull and that Dems will find their voice again. This isn't a 'yes, but' argument ................. it's very simple and very clear. Bush broke the law.
LORD, what I wouldn't give if Dems could stay on message for more than a short time. This is a loser for Bush because as more facts come out (which they will), the public will begin to lose their initial support for spying. I firmly believe that the initial public support was a knee-jerk reaction, and that can be overcome.
But not if Dems decide that this is a loser of an issue and throw in the towel.
I hope that I'm wrong. We CANNOT allow Bush to break the law and skate clean away. So I hope that this is just the lull and that Dems will find their voice again. This isn't a 'yes, but' argument ................. it's very simple and very clear. Bush broke the law.
Lawyers Group Says Bush Exceeds His Powers
By ANNA JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer
The American Bar Association denounced President Bush's warrantless domestic surveillance program Monday, accusing him of exceeding his powers under the Constitution.
The program has prompted a heated debate about presidential powers in the war on terror since it was disclosed in December.
The nation's largest organization of lawyers adopted a policy opposing any future government use of electronic surveillance in the United States for foreign intelligence purposes without first obtaining warrants from a special court set up under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
The 400,000-member ABA said that if the president believes the FISA is inadequate to protect Americans, he should to ask Congress to amend the act.
Bush and his administration have defended the warrantless eavesdropping, saying it is needed to fill a gap in U.S. security and is allowable under both the president's constitutional powers and the congressional measure authorizing him to go to war in September 2001.
The ABA has urged Congress to affirm that when it authorized Bush to go to war, it did not intend to endorse warrantless spying.
The group also called on Congress to investigate the president's program to determine its legality, the extent of telephone and e-mail spying, and whether information obtained through the program was used in legal proceedings.
White House spokesman Allen Abney said Monday the "administration has provided ample legal justification" for the program, which is "firmly grounded" in the law.
___
On the Net:
http://www.abanet.org
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.
By ANNA JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer
The American Bar Association denounced President Bush's warrantless domestic surveillance program Monday, accusing him of exceeding his powers under the Constitution.
The program has prompted a heated debate about presidential powers in the war on terror since it was disclosed in December.
The nation's largest organization of lawyers adopted a policy opposing any future government use of electronic surveillance in the United States for foreign intelligence purposes without first obtaining warrants from a special court set up under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
The 400,000-member ABA said that if the president believes the FISA is inadequate to protect Americans, he should to ask Congress to amend the act.
Bush and his administration have defended the warrantless eavesdropping, saying it is needed to fill a gap in U.S. security and is allowable under both the president's constitutional powers and the congressional measure authorizing him to go to war in September 2001.
The ABA has urged Congress to affirm that when it authorized Bush to go to war, it did not intend to endorse warrantless spying.
The group also called on Congress to investigate the president's program to determine its legality, the extent of telephone and e-mail spying, and whether information obtained through the program was used in legal proceedings.
White House spokesman Allen Abney said Monday the "administration has provided ample legal justification" for the program, which is "firmly grounded" in the law.
___
On the Net:
http://www.abanet.org
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.
Congressional Probe of NSA Spying Is in Doubt
White House Sways Some GOP Lawmakers
By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 15, 2006; A03
Congress appeared ready to launch an investigation into the Bush administration's warrantless domestic surveillance program last week, but an all-out White House lobbying campaign has dramatically slowed the effort and may kill it, key Republican and Democratic sources said yesterday.
The Senate intelligence committee is scheduled to vote tomorrow on a Democratic-sponsored motion to start an inquiry into the recently revealed program in which the National Security Agency eavesdrops on an undisclosed number of phone calls and e-mails involving U.S. residents without obtaining warrants from a secret court. Two committee Democrats said the panel -- made up of eight Republicans and seven Democrats -- was clearly leaning in favor of the motion last week but now is closely divided and possibly inclined against it.
They attributed the shift to last week's closed briefings given by top administration officials to the full House and Senate intelligence committees, and to private appeals to wavering GOP senators by officials, including Vice President Cheney. "It's been a full-court press," said a top Senate Republican aide who asked to speak only on background -- as did several others for this story -- because of the classified nature of the intelligence committees' work.
Lawmakers cite senators such as Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) to illustrate the administration's success in cooling congressional zeal for an investigation. On Dec. 20, she was among two Republicans and two Democrats who signed a letter expressing "our profound concern about recent revelations that the United States Government may have engaged in domestic electronic surveillance without appropriate legal authority." The letter urged the Senate's intelligence and judiciary committees to "jointly undertake an inquiry into the facts and law surrounding these allegations."
In an interview yesterday, Snowe said, "I'm not sure it's going to be essential or necessary" to conduct an inquiry "if we can address the legislative standpoint" that would provide oversight of the surveillance program. "We're learning a lot and we're going to learn more," she said.
She cited last week's briefings before the full House and Senate intelligence committees by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and former NSA director Michael V. Hayden.
"The administration has obviously gotten the message that they need to be more forthcoming," Snowe said.
Before the New York Times disclosed the NSA program in mid-December, administration briefings regarding it were highly secret and limited to eight lawmakers: the top Republican and Democratic leader of the House and Senate, respectively, and the top Republican and Democrat on the House and Senate intelligence committees.
The White House characterized last week's closed-door briefings to the full committees as a significant concession and a sign of the administration's respect for Congress and its oversight responsibilities. Many Democrats dismissed the briefings as virtually useless, but senators said yesterday they appear to have played a big role in slowing momentum for an inquiry.
John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), the Senate intelligence committee's vice chairman, has drafted a motion calling for a wide-ranging inquiry into the surveillance program, according to congressional sources who have seen it. Rockefeller declined to be interviewed yesterday.
Sources close to Rockefeller say he is frustrated by what he sees as heavy-handed White House efforts to dissuade Republicans from supporting his measure. They noted that Cheney conducted a Republicans-only meeting on intelligence matters in the Capitol yesterday.
Senate intelligence committee member Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) said in an interview that he supports the NSA program and would oppose a congressional investigation. He said he is drafting legislation that would "specifically authorize this program" by excluding it from the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which established a secret court to consider government requests for wiretap warrants in anti-terrorist investigations.
The administration would be required to brief regularly a small, bipartisan panel drawn from the House and Senate intelligence committees, DeWine said, and the surveillance program would require congressional reauthorization after five years to remain in place.
Snowe said she is inclined to support DeWine's plan. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), who also signed the Dec. 20 letter seeking an inquiry, said yesterday that the FISA law should be amended to include the NSA program and to provide for congressional oversight.
As for Rockefeller's bid, Hagel said: "If some kind of inquiry would be beneficial to getting a resolution to this issue, then sure, we should look at it. But if the inquiry is just some kind of a punitive inquiry that really is not focused on finding a way out of this, then I'm not so sure that I would support that."
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
White House Sways Some GOP Lawmakers
By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 15, 2006; A03
Congress appeared ready to launch an investigation into the Bush administration's warrantless domestic surveillance program last week, but an all-out White House lobbying campaign has dramatically slowed the effort and may kill it, key Republican and Democratic sources said yesterday.
The Senate intelligence committee is scheduled to vote tomorrow on a Democratic-sponsored motion to start an inquiry into the recently revealed program in which the National Security Agency eavesdrops on an undisclosed number of phone calls and e-mails involving U.S. residents without obtaining warrants from a secret court. Two committee Democrats said the panel -- made up of eight Republicans and seven Democrats -- was clearly leaning in favor of the motion last week but now is closely divided and possibly inclined against it.
They attributed the shift to last week's closed briefings given by top administration officials to the full House and Senate intelligence committees, and to private appeals to wavering GOP senators by officials, including Vice President Cheney. "It's been a full-court press," said a top Senate Republican aide who asked to speak only on background -- as did several others for this story -- because of the classified nature of the intelligence committees' work.
Lawmakers cite senators such as Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine) to illustrate the administration's success in cooling congressional zeal for an investigation. On Dec. 20, she was among two Republicans and two Democrats who signed a letter expressing "our profound concern about recent revelations that the United States Government may have engaged in domestic electronic surveillance without appropriate legal authority." The letter urged the Senate's intelligence and judiciary committees to "jointly undertake an inquiry into the facts and law surrounding these allegations."
In an interview yesterday, Snowe said, "I'm not sure it's going to be essential or necessary" to conduct an inquiry "if we can address the legislative standpoint" that would provide oversight of the surveillance program. "We're learning a lot and we're going to learn more," she said.
She cited last week's briefings before the full House and Senate intelligence committees by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and former NSA director Michael V. Hayden.
"The administration has obviously gotten the message that they need to be more forthcoming," Snowe said.
Before the New York Times disclosed the NSA program in mid-December, administration briefings regarding it were highly secret and limited to eight lawmakers: the top Republican and Democratic leader of the House and Senate, respectively, and the top Republican and Democrat on the House and Senate intelligence committees.
The White House characterized last week's closed-door briefings to the full committees as a significant concession and a sign of the administration's respect for Congress and its oversight responsibilities. Many Democrats dismissed the briefings as virtually useless, but senators said yesterday they appear to have played a big role in slowing momentum for an inquiry.
John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), the Senate intelligence committee's vice chairman, has drafted a motion calling for a wide-ranging inquiry into the surveillance program, according to congressional sources who have seen it. Rockefeller declined to be interviewed yesterday.
Sources close to Rockefeller say he is frustrated by what he sees as heavy-handed White House efforts to dissuade Republicans from supporting his measure. They noted that Cheney conducted a Republicans-only meeting on intelligence matters in the Capitol yesterday.
Senate intelligence committee member Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) said in an interview that he supports the NSA program and would oppose a congressional investigation. He said he is drafting legislation that would "specifically authorize this program" by excluding it from the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which established a secret court to consider government requests for wiretap warrants in anti-terrorist investigations.
The administration would be required to brief regularly a small, bipartisan panel drawn from the House and Senate intelligence committees, DeWine said, and the surveillance program would require congressional reauthorization after five years to remain in place.
Snowe said she is inclined to support DeWine's plan. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), who also signed the Dec. 20 letter seeking an inquiry, said yesterday that the FISA law should be amended to include the NSA program and to provide for congressional oversight.
As for Rockefeller's bid, Hagel said: "If some kind of inquiry would be beneficial to getting a resolution to this issue, then sure, we should look at it. But if the inquiry is just some kind of a punitive inquiry that really is not focused on finding a way out of this, then I'm not so sure that I would support that."
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
CONFRONTING THE WHITE HOUSE'S "MONARCHICAL DOCTRINE"
More and more Americans of all political stripes are concerned that the
Bush Administration has exceeded its legal authority by conducting
intelligence surveillance outside of what the law permits.
Anxiety over illegal surveillance is heightened by the prospect that an
ideologically subservient Congress may not insist on the primacy of
law, but will simply defer to the Administration, or authorize whatever
the White House wishes.
"The administration's stance that warrantless surveillance by the
National Security Agency targeting American citizens on American soil
is a legal exercise of the president's inherent powers as commander in
chief, even though it violates the clear language of the 1978 Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act" is a "monarchical doctrine," wrote
columnist George Will today.
"Monarchical" is a curse word in conservative thought, and for an
American conservative monarchy is a provocation to revolutionary
opposition.
"We cannot continue to claim we are a nation of laws and not of men if
our laws, and indeed even the Constitution of the United States itself,
may be summarily breached because of some determination of expediency
or because the President says, 'Trust me'," said Sen. Robert Byrd in a
Senate floor statement yesterday.
"I plead with the American public to tune in to what is happening in
this country. Please forget the political party with which you may
usually be associated and, instead, think about the right of due
process, the presumption of innocence, and the right to a private
life."
"This President, in my judgment, may have broken the law and most
certainly has violated the spirit of the Constitution and the public
trust," Sen. Byrd said.
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2006_cr/byrd021506.html
In an unusual rebuke, the American Bar Association this week found it
necessary to urge President Bush to comply with the law.
"The American Bar Association calls upon the President to abide by the
limitations which the Constitution imposes on a president under our
system of checks and balances and respect the essential roles of the
Congress and the judicial branch in ensuring that our national security
is protected in a manner consistent with constitutional guarantees."
See the report of the American Bar Association Task Force on Domestic
Surveillance in the Fight Against Terrorism:
http://www.abanet.org/op/domsurv/
More and more Americans of all political stripes are concerned that the
Bush Administration has exceeded its legal authority by conducting
intelligence surveillance outside of what the law permits.
Anxiety over illegal surveillance is heightened by the prospect that an
ideologically subservient Congress may not insist on the primacy of
law, but will simply defer to the Administration, or authorize whatever
the White House wishes.
"The administration's stance that warrantless surveillance by the
National Security Agency targeting American citizens on American soil
is a legal exercise of the president's inherent powers as commander in
chief, even though it violates the clear language of the 1978 Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act" is a "monarchical doctrine," wrote
columnist George Will today.
"Monarchical" is a curse word in conservative thought, and for an
American conservative monarchy is a provocation to revolutionary
opposition.
"We cannot continue to claim we are a nation of laws and not of men if
our laws, and indeed even the Constitution of the United States itself,
may be summarily breached because of some determination of expediency
or because the President says, 'Trust me'," said Sen. Robert Byrd in a
Senate floor statement yesterday.
"I plead with the American public to tune in to what is happening in
this country. Please forget the political party with which you may
usually be associated and, instead, think about the right of due
process, the presumption of innocence, and the right to a private
life."
"This President, in my judgment, may have broken the law and most
certainly has violated the spirit of the Constitution and the public
trust," Sen. Byrd said.
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2006_cr/byrd021506.html
In an unusual rebuke, the American Bar Association this week found it
necessary to urge President Bush to comply with the law.
"The American Bar Association calls upon the President to abide by the
limitations which the Constitution imposes on a president under our
system of checks and balances and respect the essential roles of the
Congress and the judicial branch in ensuring that our national security
is protected in a manner consistent with constitutional guarantees."
See the report of the American Bar Association Task Force on Domestic
Surveillance in the Fight Against Terrorism:
http://www.abanet.org/op/domsurv/
February 16, 2006
Justice Department Reviews Role of Its Lawyers in Spying
By SCOTT SHANE and ERIC LICHTBLAU
WASHINGTON, Feb. 15 — The ethics office of the Justice Department has begun a review of the department's role in the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program, a move that could shed light on internal dissension over the legal status of the secret program.
The review, being conducted by the department's Office of Professional Responsibility, is the first formal government inquiry into the surveillance program since its existence was reported by The New York Times in December.
The head of the office, H. Marshall Jarrett, disclosed the inquiry in a Feb. 2 letter to Representative Maurice D. Hinchey, Democrat of New York, who had joined three other Democrats in calling for an investigation. The letter was received Wednesday because of a delay for routine irradiation of mail sent to Congress, Mr. Hinchey's spokesman said.
The Justice Department review was begun despite public assurances by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and President Bush that the program is legal and closely monitored by government lawyers.
Congress has not opened any investigation of the program, despite the urging of Democrats, some Republicans and privacy advocates, who believe that the eavesdropping violates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act because it is conducted without court warrants.
The Senate Intelligence Committee is scheduled to hold a closed meeting on Thursday to decide whether to conduct its own examination, but the White House strongly opposes an investigation, and Democrats say they are pessimistic that a full inquiry will be opened.
The Office of Professional Responsibility investigates accusations of unethical or improper conduct by department lawyers. Justice Department officials played down the significance of the investigation, stressing that it will not look at whether the program was legal.
"O.P.R. routinely looks into issues of this kind," said Tasia Scolinos, a department spokeswoman. "They will not be making a determination on the lawfulness of the N.S.A. program, but rather will determine whether the department lawyers complied with their professional obligations."
Senior department officials, including Attorney General John Ashcroft and his chief deputy, James B. Comey, voiced concerns in 2004 about the program's legal underpinnings. Those concerns led the department to balk at approving the program for a time and led the administration to suspend the program for several months, officials with knowledge of the deliberations have said.
The concerns also prompted the N.S.A. to impose tighter controls on how it determined that someone suspected of having links to Al Qaeda should have their communications monitored.
The Justice officials' concerns were noted in the letter sent Jan. 9 to Mr. Jarrett, of the Office of Professional Responsibility, by Mr. Hinchey and Representatives Henry A. Waxman and Lynn Woolsey of California and John Lewis of Georgia.
The letter asked Mr. Jarrett to open an investigation to answer questions about the department's role, including when and how the department authorized the program, what Mr. Comey's objections were and what led to the department's auditing of the program in 2004.
In his reply, Mr. Jarrett acknowledged the Democrats' questions, including "whether such activities are permissible under existing law."
"For your information, we have initiated an investigation," replied Mr. Jarrett.
Some critics of the N.S.A. program said that they welcomed the review, but that a broader outside inquiry into the program was still needed.
Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said the Justice review should be "independent and free from the strong-arming of those interested in trying to paper over this illegal program." He said the inquiry was "potentially constructive" but would not substitute for "strong Congressional oversight."
Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the decision was a "step in the right direction, raising some of the questions that need to be answered, but it doesn't go far enough."
Terror Suspect's Defense Tactic
MIAMI, Feb. 15 (AP) — Lawyers for Adham Amin Hassoun, a co-defendant of Jose Padilla in a terrorism case, asked a federal judge on Tuesday to order the government to provide electronic intercepts by the N.S.A. that were not approved by a court. A second motion requests that the judge review intercepts collected under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and throw out any that appear to have been illegal.
Copyright 2006The New York Times Company
Justice Department Reviews Role of Its Lawyers in Spying
By SCOTT SHANE and ERIC LICHTBLAU
WASHINGTON, Feb. 15 — The ethics office of the Justice Department has begun a review of the department's role in the National Security Agency's domestic eavesdropping program, a move that could shed light on internal dissension over the legal status of the secret program.
The review, being conducted by the department's Office of Professional Responsibility, is the first formal government inquiry into the surveillance program since its existence was reported by The New York Times in December.
The head of the office, H. Marshall Jarrett, disclosed the inquiry in a Feb. 2 letter to Representative Maurice D. Hinchey, Democrat of New York, who had joined three other Democrats in calling for an investigation. The letter was received Wednesday because of a delay for routine irradiation of mail sent to Congress, Mr. Hinchey's spokesman said.
The Justice Department review was begun despite public assurances by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and President Bush that the program is legal and closely monitored by government lawyers.
Congress has not opened any investigation of the program, despite the urging of Democrats, some Republicans and privacy advocates, who believe that the eavesdropping violates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act because it is conducted without court warrants.
The Senate Intelligence Committee is scheduled to hold a closed meeting on Thursday to decide whether to conduct its own examination, but the White House strongly opposes an investigation, and Democrats say they are pessimistic that a full inquiry will be opened.
The Office of Professional Responsibility investigates accusations of unethical or improper conduct by department lawyers. Justice Department officials played down the significance of the investigation, stressing that it will not look at whether the program was legal.
"O.P.R. routinely looks into issues of this kind," said Tasia Scolinos, a department spokeswoman. "They will not be making a determination on the lawfulness of the N.S.A. program, but rather will determine whether the department lawyers complied with their professional obligations."
Senior department officials, including Attorney General John Ashcroft and his chief deputy, James B. Comey, voiced concerns in 2004 about the program's legal underpinnings. Those concerns led the department to balk at approving the program for a time and led the administration to suspend the program for several months, officials with knowledge of the deliberations have said.
The concerns also prompted the N.S.A. to impose tighter controls on how it determined that someone suspected of having links to Al Qaeda should have their communications monitored.
The Justice officials' concerns were noted in the letter sent Jan. 9 to Mr. Jarrett, of the Office of Professional Responsibility, by Mr. Hinchey and Representatives Henry A. Waxman and Lynn Woolsey of California and John Lewis of Georgia.
The letter asked Mr. Jarrett to open an investigation to answer questions about the department's role, including when and how the department authorized the program, what Mr. Comey's objections were and what led to the department's auditing of the program in 2004.
In his reply, Mr. Jarrett acknowledged the Democrats' questions, including "whether such activities are permissible under existing law."
"For your information, we have initiated an investigation," replied Mr. Jarrett.
Some critics of the N.S.A. program said that they welcomed the review, but that a broader outside inquiry into the program was still needed.
Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said the Justice review should be "independent and free from the strong-arming of those interested in trying to paper over this illegal program." He said the inquiry was "potentially constructive" but would not substitute for "strong Congressional oversight."
Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the decision was a "step in the right direction, raising some of the questions that need to be answered, but it doesn't go far enough."
Terror Suspect's Defense Tactic
MIAMI, Feb. 15 (AP) — Lawyers for Adham Amin Hassoun, a co-defendant of Jose Padilla in a terrorism case, asked a federal judge on Tuesday to order the government to provide electronic intercepts by the N.S.A. that were not approved by a court. A second motion requests that the judge review intercepts collected under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and throw out any that appear to have been illegal.
Copyright 2006The New York Times Company
QUOTE(Snuffysmith @ Feb 16 2006, 10:34 AM)
CONFRONTING THE WHITE HOUSE'S "MONARCHICAL DOCTRINE"
More and more Americans of all political stripes are concerned that the
Bush Administration has exceeded its legal authority by conducting
intelligence surveillance outside of what the law permits.
Anxiety over illegal surveillance is heightened by the prospect that an
ideologically subservient Congress may not insist on the primacy of
law, but will simply defer to the Administration, or authorize whatever
the White House wishes.
"The administration's stance that warrantless surveillance by the
National Security Agency targeting American citizens on American soil
is a legal exercise of the president's inherent powers as commander in
chief, even though it violates the clear language of the 1978 Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act" is a "monarchical doctrine," wrote
columnist George Will today.
"Monarchical" is a curse word in conservative thought, and for an
American conservative monarchy is a provocation to revolutionary
opposition.
"We cannot continue to claim we are a nation of laws and not of men if
our laws, and indeed even the Constitution of the United States itself,
may be summarily breached because of some determination of expediency
or because the President says, 'Trust me'," said Sen. Robert Byrd in a
Senate floor statement yesterday.
"I plead with the American public to tune in to what is happening in
this country. Please forget the political party with which you may
usually be associated and, instead, think about the right of due
process, the presumption of innocence, and the right to a private
life."
"This President, in my judgment, may have broken the law and most
certainly has violated the spirit of the Constitution and the public
trust," Sen. Byrd said.
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2006_cr/byrd021506.html
In an unusual rebuke, the American Bar Association this week found it
necessary to urge President Bush to comply with the law.
"The American Bar Association calls upon the President to abide by the
limitations which the Constitution imposes on a president under our
system of checks and balances and respect the essential roles of the
Congress and the judicial branch in ensuring that our national security
is protected in a manner consistent with constitutional guarantees."
See the report of the American Bar Association Task Force on Domestic
Surveillance in the Fight Against Terrorism:
http://www.abanet.org/op/domsurv/
More and more Americans of all political stripes are concerned that the
Bush Administration has exceeded its legal authority by conducting
intelligence surveillance outside of what the law permits.
Anxiety over illegal surveillance is heightened by the prospect that an
ideologically subservient Congress may not insist on the primacy of
law, but will simply defer to the Administration, or authorize whatever
the White House wishes.
"The administration's stance that warrantless surveillance by the
National Security Agency targeting American citizens on American soil
is a legal exercise of the president's inherent powers as commander in
chief, even though it violates the clear language of the 1978 Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act" is a "monarchical doctrine," wrote
columnist George Will today.
"Monarchical" is a curse word in conservative thought, and for an
American conservative monarchy is a provocation to revolutionary
opposition.
"We cannot continue to claim we are a nation of laws and not of men if
our laws, and indeed even the Constitution of the United States itself,
may be summarily breached because of some determination of expediency
or because the President says, 'Trust me'," said Sen. Robert Byrd in a
Senate floor statement yesterday.
"I plead with the American public to tune in to what is happening in
this country. Please forget the political party with which you may
usually be associated and, instead, think about the right of due
process, the presumption of innocence, and the right to a private
life."
"This President, in my judgment, may have broken the law and most
certainly has violated the spirit of the Constitution and the public
trust," Sen. Byrd said.
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2006_cr/byrd021506.html
In an unusual rebuke, the American Bar Association this week found it
necessary to urge President Bush to comply with the law.
"The American Bar Association calls upon the President to abide by the
limitations which the Constitution imposes on a president under our
system of checks and balances and respect the essential roles of the
Congress and the judicial branch in ensuring that our national security
is protected in a manner consistent with constitutional guarantees."
See the report of the American Bar Association Task Force on Domestic
Surveillance in the Fight Against Terrorism:
http://www.abanet.org/op/domsurv/
aka The bush doctrine
QUOTE
"If you want war, nourish a doctrine. Doctrines are the most frightful tyrants to which men ever are subject..."
~William Graham Sumner
~William Graham Sumner
February 17, 2006
Accord in House to Hold Inquiry on Surveillance
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON, Feb. 16 — Leaders of the House Intelligence Committee said Thursday that they had agreed to open a Congressional inquiry prompted by the Bush administration's domestic surveillance program. But a dispute immediately broke out among committee Republicans over the scope of the inquiry.
Representative Heather A. Wilson, the New Mexico Republican and committee member who called last week for the investigation, said the review "will have multiple avenues, because we want to completely understand the program and move forward."
But an aide to Representative Peter Hoekstra, the Michigan Republican who leads the committee, said the inquiry would be much more limited in scope, focusing on whether federal surveillance laws needed to be changed and not on the eavesdropping program itself.
The agreement to conduct an inquiry came as the Senate Intelligence Committee put off a vote on conducting its own investigation after the White House, reversing course, agreed to open discussions about changing federal surveillance law. Senate Democrats accused Republicans of bowing to White House pressure.
For weeks, the Bush administration has been strongly resisting calls from Democrats and some Republicans for a full review into the National Security Agency's surveillance program, saying such inquiries are unnecessary and risked disclosing national security information that could help Al Qaeda.
Elsewhere on Thursday, a federal judge ordered the administration to begin turning over internal documents on the surveillance program, the Justice Department balked at having John Ashcroft, the former attorney general, and other former department officials testify about it before Congress, and lawyers for a Kentucky man prepared to bring a federal civil rights lawsuit on Friday against President Bush to have the surveillance declared illegal and unconstitutional.
The surveillance, authorized in secret by President Bush soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, has allowed the N.S.A. to eavesdrop on the international phone and e-mail communications of hundreds and perhaps thousands of people within the United States without warrants when the authorities suspect that they might have links to terrorists.
Mr. Hoekstra has been one of the staunchest defenders of the program. But in discussions this week with other Republican and Democratic leaders of the committee, he agreed to have the committee open the inquiry, officials said, after signs that some Republicans on the panel had growing concerns about the operation.
Ms. Wilson said the review would include closed-door briefings by intelligence officials about the operational details of the program, a review of its legality and discussion about whether changes are needed in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, which bans eavesdropping in intelligence investigations without a court order.
While the administration agreed under pressure last week to provide limited operational details to the House and Senate intelligence committees, Ms. Wilson said she wanted more information and remained uncertain whether the N.S.A. had the needed safeguards in place to protect against civil rights abuses against Americans.
But Jamal Ware, a spokesman for Mr. Hoekstra, said: "This is not an inquiry into the program. It's a comprehensive review of the FISA statute. " He said Mr. Hoekstra "wants to set up a process to move forward and look at the entire statute and ways to modernize it."
But aides in two other Congressional offices, speaking only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said their understanding of the agreement was that the inquiry would focus in large part on operational details of the surveillance program.
Meanwhile, in the Senate, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, said the White House had agreed in principle to negotiate on legislation that would give Congress authority to oversee the eavesdropping.
Mr. Roberts used the deal to push off a vote on a plan by Democrats to conduct a full-scale investigation of the program. The senior Democrat on the panel, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, emerged from a closed-door committee meeting fuming and accused Republicans of caving to White House pressure.
"It is apparent to me that the White House has applied heavy pressure in recent weeks to prevent the committee from doing its job," Mr. Rockefeller said. "Although some members of this committee indicate they need more time to decide on what action to take, I believe this is another stalling tactic."
In a sign of the bitter partisan split the potential inquiry has engendered, the Senate panel met behind closed doors for nearly two hours before voting, along party lines, simply to adjourn. Mr. Roberts said that if there was no detailed agreement with the White House by the time of the next committee meeting, on March 7, the panel could take up the issue of an inquiry then.
"The administration is now committed to legislation and has agreed to brief more Intelligence Committee members on the nature of the surveillance program," Mr. Roberts said, adding that "the administration has come a long way in the last month."
Mr. Roberts and other Republicans say they are wary of an investigation into the secret program because providing information to Congress might result in leaks. But Democrats say there is no way to pass legislation involving the program until they have more information about it.
"I don't think it's possible for Congress to produce responsible bipartisan legislation dealing with a program that Congress knows very little about," Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said.
Until now, Mr. Bush has steadfastly resisted the idea of new legislation, arguing that he has the inherent authority to order the wiretaps and that Congress also gave him the power to do so when it authorized him to use military force after the Sept. 11 attacks. But the White House is under increasing pressure from Republicans who are skeptical of that assertion.
Democrats and a growing number of Republicans say the eavesdropping violates the surveillance act, which when it was passed in 1978 created a special intelligence court to oversee domestic wiretapping. They have called for the law to be revamped. On Thursday, Mr. Roberts talked about possible changes in the act without saying what they might be.
The White House is unlikely to agree to bring the wiretapping under the scope of the FISA court, as most Democrats and some Republicans want. Instead, the administration appears interested in a proposal by Senator Mike DeWine, Republican of Ohio, that would explicitly authorize the wiretapping, without court warrants, but create small Congressional subcommittees to oversee it.
Mr. DeWine said that Harriet E. Miers, the White House counsel, called him Wednesday, on the eve of the expected Intelligence Committee vote, to talk about his legislation, and the White House indicated some support for it.
But the DeWine proposal is unlikely to satisfy other critics of the program, including some Republicans, who say it must be brought within the scope of the intelligence court. Among them is Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who is circulating legislation that would require the court to pass judgment on whether the wiretapping is constitutional.
"Unless they're prepared to have a determination on constitutionality as to their programs, window dressing oversight will not be sufficient," Mr. Specter said.
Copyright 2006The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map Back to Top
Accord in House to Hold Inquiry on Surveillance
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON, Feb. 16 — Leaders of the House Intelligence Committee said Thursday that they had agreed to open a Congressional inquiry prompted by the Bush administration's domestic surveillance program. But a dispute immediately broke out among committee Republicans over the scope of the inquiry.
Representative Heather A. Wilson, the New Mexico Republican and committee member who called last week for the investigation, said the review "will have multiple avenues, because we want to completely understand the program and move forward."
But an aide to Representative Peter Hoekstra, the Michigan Republican who leads the committee, said the inquiry would be much more limited in scope, focusing on whether federal surveillance laws needed to be changed and not on the eavesdropping program itself.
The agreement to conduct an inquiry came as the Senate Intelligence Committee put off a vote on conducting its own investigation after the White House, reversing course, agreed to open discussions about changing federal surveillance law. Senate Democrats accused Republicans of bowing to White House pressure.
For weeks, the Bush administration has been strongly resisting calls from Democrats and some Republicans for a full review into the National Security Agency's surveillance program, saying such inquiries are unnecessary and risked disclosing national security information that could help Al Qaeda.
Elsewhere on Thursday, a federal judge ordered the administration to begin turning over internal documents on the surveillance program, the Justice Department balked at having John Ashcroft, the former attorney general, and other former department officials testify about it before Congress, and lawyers for a Kentucky man prepared to bring a federal civil rights lawsuit on Friday against President Bush to have the surveillance declared illegal and unconstitutional.
The surveillance, authorized in secret by President Bush soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, has allowed the N.S.A. to eavesdrop on the international phone and e-mail communications of hundreds and perhaps thousands of people within the United States without warrants when the authorities suspect that they might have links to terrorists.
Mr. Hoekstra has been one of the staunchest defenders of the program. But in discussions this week with other Republican and Democratic leaders of the committee, he agreed to have the committee open the inquiry, officials said, after signs that some Republicans on the panel had growing concerns about the operation.
Ms. Wilson said the review would include closed-door briefings by intelligence officials about the operational details of the program, a review of its legality and discussion about whether changes are needed in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, which bans eavesdropping in intelligence investigations without a court order.
While the administration agreed under pressure last week to provide limited operational details to the House and Senate intelligence committees, Ms. Wilson said she wanted more information and remained uncertain whether the N.S.A. had the needed safeguards in place to protect against civil rights abuses against Americans.
But Jamal Ware, a spokesman for Mr. Hoekstra, said: "This is not an inquiry into the program. It's a comprehensive review of the FISA statute. " He said Mr. Hoekstra "wants to set up a process to move forward and look at the entire statute and ways to modernize it."
But aides in two other Congressional offices, speaking only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said their understanding of the agreement was that the inquiry would focus in large part on operational details of the surveillance program.
Meanwhile, in the Senate, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, said the White House had agreed in principle to negotiate on legislation that would give Congress authority to oversee the eavesdropping.
Mr. Roberts used the deal to push off a vote on a plan by Democrats to conduct a full-scale investigation of the program. The senior Democrat on the panel, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, emerged from a closed-door committee meeting fuming and accused Republicans of caving to White House pressure.
"It is apparent to me that the White House has applied heavy pressure in recent weeks to prevent the committee from doing its job," Mr. Rockefeller said. "Although some members of this committee indicate they need more time to decide on what action to take, I believe this is another stalling tactic."
In a sign of the bitter partisan split the potential inquiry has engendered, the Senate panel met behind closed doors for nearly two hours before voting, along party lines, simply to adjourn. Mr. Roberts said that if there was no detailed agreement with the White House by the time of the next committee meeting, on March 7, the panel could take up the issue of an inquiry then.
"The administration is now committed to legislation and has agreed to brief more Intelligence Committee members on the nature of the surveillance program," Mr. Roberts said, adding that "the administration has come a long way in the last month."
Mr. Roberts and other Republicans say they are wary of an investigation into the secret program because providing information to Congress might result in leaks. But Democrats say there is no way to pass legislation involving the program until they have more information about it.
"I don't think it's possible for Congress to produce responsible bipartisan legislation dealing with a program that Congress knows very little about," Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said.
Until now, Mr. Bush has steadfastly resisted the idea of new legislation, arguing that he has the inherent authority to order the wiretaps and that Congress also gave him the power to do so when it authorized him to use military force after the Sept. 11 attacks. But the White House is under increasing pressure from Republicans who are skeptical of that assertion.
Democrats and a growing number of Republicans say the eavesdropping violates the surveillance act, which when it was passed in 1978 created a special intelligence court to oversee domestic wiretapping. They have called for the law to be revamped. On Thursday, Mr. Roberts talked about possible changes in the act without saying what they might be.
The White House is unlikely to agree to bring the wiretapping under the scope of the FISA court, as most Democrats and some Republicans want. Instead, the administration appears interested in a proposal by Senator Mike DeWine, Republican of Ohio, that would explicitly authorize the wiretapping, without court warrants, but create small Congressional subcommittees to oversee it.
Mr. DeWine said that Harriet E. Miers, the White House counsel, called him Wednesday, on the eve of the expected Intelligence Committee vote, to talk about his legislation, and the White House indicated some support for it.
But the DeWine proposal is unlikely to satisfy other critics of the program, including some Republicans, who say it must be brought within the scope of the intelligence court. Among them is Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who is circulating legislation that would require the court to pass judgment on whether the wiretapping is constitutional.
"Unless they're prepared to have a determination on constitutionality as to their programs, window dressing oversight will not be sufficient," Mr. Specter said.
Copyright 2006The New York Times Company Home Privacy Policy Search Corrections XML Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map Back to Top
February 17, 2006
Editorial
Doing the President's Dirty Work
Is there any aspect of President Bush's miserable record on intelligence that Senator Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is not willing to excuse and help to cover up?
For more than a year, Mr. Roberts has been dragging out an investigation into why Mr. Bush presented old, dubious and just plain wrong intelligence on Iraq as solid new proof that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was in league with Al Qaeda. It was supposed to start after the 2004 election, but Mr. Roberts was letting it die of neglect until the Democrats protested by forcing the Senate into an unusual closed session last November.
Now Mr. Roberts is trying to stop an investigation into Mr. Bush's decision to allow the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans without getting the warrants required by a 27-year-old federal law enacted to stop that sort of abuse.
Mr. Roberts had promised to hold a committee vote yesterday on whether to investigate. But he canceled the vote, and then made two astonishing announcements. He said he was working with the White House on amending the 1978 law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, to permit warrantless spying. And then he suggested that such a change would eliminate the need for an inquiry.
Stifling his own committee without even bothering to get the facts is outrageous. As the vice chairman of the panel, Senator John Rockefeller IV, pointed out, supervising intelligence gathering is in fact the purpose of the intelligence committee.
Mr. Rockefeller said the White House had not offered enough information to make an informed judgment on the program possible. It is withholding, for instance, such minor details as how the program works, how it is reviewed, how much and what kind of information is collected, and how the information is stored and used.
Mr. Roberts said the White House had agreed to provide more briefings to the Senate Intelligence Committee — hardly an enormous concession since it is already required to do so. And he said he and the White House were working out "a fix" for the law. That is the worst news. FISA was written to prevent the president from violating Americans' constitutional rights. It was amended after 9/11 to make it even easier for the administration to do legally what it is now doing.
FISA does not in any way prevent Mr. Bush from spying on Qaeda members or other terrorists. The last thing the nation needs is to amend the law to institutionalize the imperial powers Mr. Bush seized after 9/11.
Copyright 2006The New York Times
Editorial
Doing the President's Dirty Work
Is there any aspect of President Bush's miserable record on intelligence that Senator Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is not willing to excuse and help to cover up?
For more than a year, Mr. Roberts has been dragging out an investigation into why Mr. Bush presented old, dubious and just plain wrong intelligence on Iraq as solid new proof that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was in league with Al Qaeda. It was supposed to start after the 2004 election, but Mr. Roberts was letting it die of neglect until the Democrats protested by forcing the Senate into an unusual closed session last November.
Now Mr. Roberts is trying to stop an investigation into Mr. Bush's decision to allow the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans without getting the warrants required by a 27-year-old federal law enacted to stop that sort of abuse.
Mr. Roberts had promised to hold a committee vote yesterday on whether to investigate. But he canceled the vote, and then made two astonishing announcements. He said he was working with the White House on amending the 1978 law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, to permit warrantless spying. And then he suggested that such a change would eliminate the need for an inquiry.
Stifling his own committee without even bothering to get the facts is outrageous. As the vice chairman of the panel, Senator John Rockefeller IV, pointed out, supervising intelligence gathering is in fact the purpose of the intelligence committee.
Mr. Rockefeller said the White House had not offered enough information to make an informed judgment on the program possible. It is withholding, for instance, such minor details as how the program works, how it is reviewed, how much and what kind of information is collected, and how the information is stored and used.
Mr. Roberts said the White House had agreed to provide more briefings to the Senate Intelligence Committee — hardly an enormous concession since it is already required to do so. And he said he and the White House were working out "a fix" for the law. That is the worst news. FISA was written to prevent the president from violating Americans' constitutional rights. It was amended after 9/11 to make it even easier for the administration to do legally what it is now doing.
FISA does not in any way prevent Mr. Bush from spying on Qaeda members or other terrorists. The last thing the nation needs is to amend the law to institutionalize the imperial powers Mr. Bush seized after 9/11.
Copyright 2006The New York Times
Senate Rejects Wiretapping Probe
But Judge Orders Justice Department to Turn Over Documents
By Charles Babington and Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, February 17, 2006; A06
The Bush administration helped derail a Senate bid to investigate a warrantless eavesdropping program yesterday after signaling it would reject Congress's request to have former attorney general John D. Ashcroft and other officials testify about the program's legality. The actions underscored a dramatic and possibly permanent drop in momentum for a congressional inquiry, which had seemed likely two months ago.
Senate Democrats said the Republican-led Congress was abdicating its obligations to oversee a controversial program in which the National Security Agency has monitored perhaps thousands of phone calls and e-mails involving U.S. residents and foreign parties without obtaining warrants from a secret court that handles such matters.
"It is more than apparent to me that the White House has applied heavy pressure in recent days, in recent weeks, to prevent the committee from doing its job," Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), vice chairman of the intelligence committee, said after the panel voted along party lines not to consider his motion for an investigation.
There was one setback, however, to the administration's efforts to keep tight wraps on the NSA operation. Yesterday, a federal judge ordered the Justice Department to turn over its internal documents and legal opinions about the program within 20 days -- or explain its reasons for refusing.
Before yesterday's closed-door meeting of the intelligence panel began, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said that the NSA program does not require "congressional authorization" but that the administration is "open to ideas regarding legislation." Committee sources said such comments -- characterized as meaningful by Republicans but empty by Democrats -- apparently persuaded GOP moderates to back away from earlier calls for a congressional investigation into the program.
After the meeting, Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) told reporters: "The administration is now committed to legislation and has agreed to brief more intelligence committee members on the nature of the surveillance program. The details of this agreement will take some time to work out."
Democrats said the administration's overture is so vague that it amounts to nothing, calling it a stalling tactic to give Republican lawmakers political cover for rejecting a full inquiry. "For the past three years, the Senate intelligence committee has avoided carrying out its oversight of our nation's intelligence programs whenever the White House becomes uncomfortable with the questions being asked," Rockefeller told reporters. "The very independence of this committee is called into question."
In December, two Republicans on the committee -- Olympia J. Snowe (Maine) and Chuck Hagel (Neb.) -- called for a congressional investigation of the NSA program. Yesterday, they supported the move that adjourned the meeting without voting on Rockefeller's motion.
Snowe said in a statement: "The administration must demonstrate its commitment to avoiding a constitutional deadlock by engaging in good-faith negotiations."
McClellan and Roberts cited efforts by committee member Mike DeWine (R-Ohio). DeWine, who will face a tough reelection battle this fall, is drafting legislation that would exempt the NSA program from the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The law provides a mechanism for secret warrants for wiretaps in anti-terrorism investigations. But several key Republicans, including House intelligence committee member Heather A. Wilson (N.M.) and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (Pa.), say the NSA program should fall under FISA guidelines.
In the House, the intelligence committee will ask administration officials to explain the NSA program and its legal justifications in closed hearings over the next few months, said Wilson, one of its subcommittee chairmen.
The committee "has begun a process to thoroughly review this program and the FISA law" through a series of yet-to-be-scheduled briefings and exchanges of letters that will unfold as part of the panel's "regular order," Wilson said in an interview in her office. "This is the way we do oversight," she said, adding that she has discussed the matter with the committee chairman, Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.).
Wilson indicated that the House hearings will not have the sharply investigative tone that Rockefeller sought in his motion, which would have required the administration to detail its reasons and rationale for starting the surveillance program in late 2001.
"Sometimes minority parties call for oversight" of government programs for strictly partisan reasons, said Wilson, who faces a potentially strong Democratic challenger this fall. "The intelligence committees in my view are an exception to that rule. This is not political theater. . . . We ask tough questions, and we expect straight answers."
Meanwhile yesterday on the Senate side, Specter released a day-old letter in which Assistant Attorney General William E. Moschella seemed to reject the senator's request for testimony from Ashcroft and former deputy attorney general James B. Comey. Comey had raised questions about the NSA program. Some senators want to know more about Ashcroft's response to Comey's concerns during a 2004 conversation with top administration officials while Ashcroft was hospitalized for pancreatitis.
"We do not believe that Messrs. Ashcroft and Comey would be in a position to provide any new information" to the Judiciary Committee, Moschella said in his letter Wednesday to Specter.
In a victory for three privacy advocacy groups seeking Justice Department records about the program, U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. ruled yesterday that the department cannot decide on its own what documents it will provide, because news reports in December revealing the program's existence have created a substantial public dialogue about presidential powers and individual privacy rights. Kennedy rejected Justice's argument that, because so much of the surveillance program involves classified information, the agency alone can determine when it is feasible to review and possibly release documents.
"President Bush has invited meaningful debate about the warrantless surveillance program," Kennedy wrote, alluding to comments Bush has made at news conferences and speeches acknowledging public disagreement about domestic spying. "That can only occur if DOJ processes its requests in a timely fashion and releases the information sought."
Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the department "has been extremely forthcoming about documents and information about the legal authorities" for the surveillance program.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which had requested the records under the Freedom of Information Act along with the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the National Security Archive Fund, cheered the ruling.
Kennedy agreed with the three groups that the Justice Department's decision to set its own time frame "would give the agency unchecked power to drag its feet and 'pay lip service' " to the law requiring the release of public information.
Staff writer Dan Eggen contributed to this report.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
But Judge Orders Justice Department to Turn Over Documents
By Charles Babington and Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, February 17, 2006; A06
The Bush administration helped derail a Senate bid to investigate a warrantless eavesdropping program yesterday after signaling it would reject Congress's request to have former attorney general John D. Ashcroft and other officials testify about the program's legality. The actions underscored a dramatic and possibly permanent drop in momentum for a congressional inquiry, which had seemed likely two months ago.
Senate Democrats said the Republican-led Congress was abdicating its obligations to oversee a controversial program in which the National Security Agency has monitored perhaps thousands of phone calls and e-mails involving U.S. residents and foreign parties without obtaining warrants from a secret court that handles such matters.
"It is more than apparent to me that the White House has applied heavy pressure in recent days, in recent weeks, to prevent the committee from doing its job," Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), vice chairman of the intelligence committee, said after the panel voted along party lines not to consider his motion for an investigation.
There was one setback, however, to the administration's efforts to keep tight wraps on the NSA operation. Yesterday, a federal judge ordered the Justice Department to turn over its internal documents and legal opinions about the program within 20 days -- or explain its reasons for refusing.
Before yesterday's closed-door meeting of the intelligence panel began, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said that the NSA program does not require "congressional authorization" but that the administration is "open to ideas regarding legislation." Committee sources said such comments -- characterized as meaningful by Republicans but empty by Democrats -- apparently persuaded GOP moderates to back away from earlier calls for a congressional investigation into the program.
After the meeting, Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) told reporters: "The administration is now committed to legislation and has agreed to brief more intelligence committee members on the nature of the surveillance program. The details of this agreement will take some time to work out."
Democrats said the administration's overture is so vague that it amounts to nothing, calling it a stalling tactic to give Republican lawmakers political cover for rejecting a full inquiry. "For the past three years, the Senate intelligence committee has avoided carrying out its oversight of our nation's intelligence programs whenever the White House becomes uncomfortable with the questions being asked," Rockefeller told reporters. "The very independence of this committee is called into question."
In December, two Republicans on the committee -- Olympia J. Snowe (Maine) and Chuck Hagel (Neb.) -- called for a congressional investigation of the NSA program. Yesterday, they supported the move that adjourned the meeting without voting on Rockefeller's motion.
Snowe said in a statement: "The administration must demonstrate its commitment to avoiding a constitutional deadlock by engaging in good-faith negotiations."
McClellan and Roberts cited efforts by committee member Mike DeWine (R-Ohio). DeWine, who will face a tough reelection battle this fall, is drafting legislation that would exempt the NSA program from the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The law provides a mechanism for secret warrants for wiretaps in anti-terrorism investigations. But several key Republicans, including House intelligence committee member Heather A. Wilson (N.M.) and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (Pa.), say the NSA program should fall under FISA guidelines.
In the House, the intelligence committee will ask administration officials to explain the NSA program and its legal justifications in closed hearings over the next few months, said Wilson, one of its subcommittee chairmen.
The committee "has begun a process to thoroughly review this program and the FISA law" through a series of yet-to-be-scheduled briefings and exchanges of letters that will unfold as part of the panel's "regular order," Wilson said in an interview in her office. "This is the way we do oversight," she said, adding that she has discussed the matter with the committee chairman, Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.).
Wilson indicated that the House hearings will not have the sharply investigative tone that Rockefeller sought in his motion, which would have required the administration to detail its reasons and rationale for starting the surveillance program in late 2001.
"Sometimes minority parties call for oversight" of government programs for strictly partisan reasons, said Wilson, who faces a potentially strong Democratic challenger this fall. "The intelligence committees in my view are an exception to that rule. This is not political theater. . . . We ask tough questions, and we expect straight answers."
Meanwhile yesterday on the Senate side, Specter released a day-old letter in which Assistant Attorney General William E. Moschella seemed to reject the senator's request for testimony from Ashcroft and former deputy attorney general James B. Comey. Comey had raised questions about the NSA program. Some senators want to know more about Ashcroft's response to Comey's concerns during a 2004 conversation with top administration officials while Ashcroft was hospitalized for pancreatitis.
"We do not believe that Messrs. Ashcroft and Comey would be in a position to provide any new information" to the Judiciary Committee, Moschella said in his letter Wednesday to Specter.
In a victory for three privacy advocacy groups seeking Justice Department records about the program, U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. ruled yesterday that the department cannot decide on its own what documents it will provide, because news reports in December revealing the program's existence have created a substantial public dialogue about presidential powers and individual privacy rights. Kennedy rejected Justice's argument that, because so much of the surveillance program involves classified information, the agency alone can determine when it is feasible to review and possibly release documents.
"President Bush has invited meaningful debate about the warrantless surveillance program," Kennedy wrote, alluding to comments Bush has made at news conferences and speeches acknowledging public disagreement about domestic spying. "That can only occur if DOJ processes its requests in a timely fashion and releases the information sought."
Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said the department "has been extremely forthcoming about documents and information about the legal authorities" for the surveillance program.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which had requested the records under the Freedom of Information Act along with the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the National Security Archive Fund, cheered the ruling.
Kennedy agreed with the three groups that the Justice Department's decision to set its own time frame "would give the agency unchecked power to drag its feet and 'pay lip service' " to the law requiring the release of public information.
Staff writer Dan Eggen contributed to this report.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
White House Ordered to Release Spy Papers
By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer
A federal judge ordered the Bush administration on Thursday to release documents about its warrantless surveillance program or spell out what it is withholding, a setback to efforts to keep the program under wraps.
At the same time, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said he had worked out an agreement with the White House to consider legislation and provide more information to Congress on the eavesdropping program. The panel's top Democrat, who has requested a full-scale investigation, immediately objected to what he called an abdication of the committee's responsibilities.
U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy ruled that a private group, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, will suffer irreparable harm if the documents it has been seeking since December are not processed promptly under the Freedom of Information Act. He gave the Justice Department 20 days to respond to the group's request.
"President Bush has invited meaningful debate about the wireless surveillance program," Kennedy said. "That can only occur if DOJ processes its FOIA requests in a timely fashion and releases the information sought."
Justice Department spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos said the department has been "extremely forthcoming" with information and "will continue to meet its obligations under FOIA."
On Capitol Hill, lawmakers also have been seeking more information about Bush's program that allowed the National Security Agency to eavesdrop — without court warrants — on Americans whose international calls and e-mails it believed might be linked to al-Qaida.
After a two-hour closed-door session, Senate Intelligence Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said the committee adjourned without voting on whether to open an investigation. Instead, he and the White House confirmed that they had an agreement to give lawmakers more information on the nature of the program. The White House also has committed to make changes to the current law, according to Roberts and White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino.
"I believe that such an investigation at this point ... would be detrimental to this highly classified program and efforts to reach some accommodation with the administration," Roberts said.
Still, he promised to consider the Democratic request for a vote in a March 7 meeting.
Earlier, Bush spokesman Scott McClellan reiterated that Bush does not need Congress' approval to authorize the warrantless eavesdropping and that the president would resist any legislation that might compromise the program.
Later Thursday, Bush adviser Karl Rove told at the University of Central Arkansas: "The purpose of the terrorist-surveillance program is to protect lives. The president's actions were legal and fully consistent with the 4th Amendment and the protection of our civil liberties under the constitution."
West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the Intelligence Committee's top Democrat, said the White House had applied heavy pressure to Republicans to prevent them from conducting thorough oversight. He complained that Roberts didn't even allow a vote on a proposal for a 13-point investigation that would include the program's origin and operation, technical aspects and questions raised by federal judges.
Rockefeller said the Senate cannot consider legislation because lawmakers don't have enough information. "No member of the Senate can cast an informed vote on legislation authorizing or conversely restricting the NSA's warrantless surveillance program, when they fundamentally do not know what they are authorizing or restricting," he said.
It remains unclear what changes in law may look like. Roberts indicated it may be possible "to fix" the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to authorize the president's program. Perino said the White House considers suggestions put forward by Sen. Mike DeWine (news, bio, voting record), R-Ohio, the starting point, particularly his proposal to create a special subcommittee on Capitol Hill that would regularly review the program.
DeWine's proposal would exempt Bush's program from FISA. That law set up a special court to approve warrants for monitoring inside the United States for national security investigations.
Yet Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., left the closed hearing saying he has been working on a different legislative change to FISA. "It seems that's a logical place to start, to upgrade FISA given the extraordinary expanse of technology in the 30 years that have lapsed," he said.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., told a forum at Georgetown University Law School Thursday night, "You cannot have domestic search and seizure without a warrant." He is drafting legislation to require the foreign surveillance court to review Bush's program and determine if it is constitutional.
California Rep. Jane Harman (news, bio, voting record), ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told the Georgetown audience the surveillance "can and must comply" with the law requiring warrants from the special court. However, she supported the need to conduct electronic eavesdropping to combat terrorism.
Specter's committee will continue to probe the program's legality at a Feb. 28 hearing. The Justice Department strongly discouraged him from calling former Attorney General John Ashcroft and his deputy, James Comey, to testify about the surveillance program.
Just as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales could not talk about the administration's internal deliberations when he appeared before the committee earlier this month, neither can Ashcroft nor Comey, Assistant Attorney General William Moschella said in a letter to Specter.
___
Associated Press writers Jennifer Loven, Mark Sherman and Larry Margasak contributed to this report.
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.
By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer
A federal judge ordered the Bush administration on Thursday to release documents about its warrantless surveillance program or spell out what it is withholding, a setback to efforts to keep the program under wraps.
At the same time, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said he had worked out an agreement with the White House to consider legislation and provide more information to Congress on the eavesdropping program. The panel's top Democrat, who has requested a full-scale investigation, immediately objected to what he called an abdication of the committee's responsibilities.
U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy ruled that a private group, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, will suffer irreparable harm if the documents it has been seeking since December are not processed promptly under the Freedom of Information Act. He gave the Justice Department 20 days to respond to the group's request.
"President Bush has invited meaningful debate about the wireless surveillance program," Kennedy said. "That can only occur if DOJ processes its FOIA requests in a timely fashion and releases the information sought."
Justice Department spokeswoman Tasia Scolinos said the department has been "extremely forthcoming" with information and "will continue to meet its obligations under FOIA."
On Capitol Hill, lawmakers also have been seeking more information about Bush's program that allowed the National Security Agency to eavesdrop — without court warrants — on Americans whose international calls and e-mails it believed might be linked to al-Qaida.
After a two-hour closed-door session, Senate Intelligence Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said the committee adjourned without voting on whether to open an investigation. Instead, he and the White House confirmed that they had an agreement to give lawmakers more information on the nature of the program. The White House also has committed to make changes to the current law, according to Roberts and White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino.
"I believe that such an investigation at this point ... would be detrimental to this highly classified program and efforts to reach some accommodation with the administration," Roberts said.
Still, he promised to consider the Democratic request for a vote in a March 7 meeting.
Earlier, Bush spokesman Scott McClellan reiterated that Bush does not need Congress' approval to authorize the warrantless eavesdropping and that the president would resist any legislation that might compromise the program.
Later Thursday, Bush adviser Karl Rove told at the University of Central Arkansas: "The purpose of the terrorist-surveillance program is to protect lives. The president's actions were legal and fully consistent with the 4th Amendment and the protection of our civil liberties under the constitution."
West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the Intelligence Committee's top Democrat, said the White House had applied heavy pressure to Republicans to prevent them from conducting thorough oversight. He complained that Roberts didn't even allow a vote on a proposal for a 13-point investigation that would include the program's origin and operation, technical aspects and questions raised by federal judges.
Rockefeller said the Senate cannot consider legislation because lawmakers don't have enough information. "No member of the Senate can cast an informed vote on legislation authorizing or conversely restricting the NSA's warrantless surveillance program, when they fundamentally do not know what they are authorizing or restricting," he said.
It remains unclear what changes in law may look like. Roberts indicated it may be possible "to fix" the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to authorize the president's program. Perino said the White House considers suggestions put forward by Sen. Mike DeWine (news, bio, voting record), R-Ohio, the starting point, particularly his proposal to create a special subcommittee on Capitol Hill that would regularly review the program.
DeWine's proposal would exempt Bush's program from FISA. That law set up a special court to approve warrants for monitoring inside the United States for national security investigations.
Yet Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., left the closed hearing saying he has been working on a different legislative change to FISA. "It seems that's a logical place to start, to upgrade FISA given the extraordinary expanse of technology in the 30 years that have lapsed," he said.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., told a forum at Georgetown University Law School Thursday night, "You cannot have domestic search and seizure without a warrant." He is drafting legislation to require the foreign surveillance court to review Bush's program and determine if it is constitutional.
California Rep. Jane Harman (news, bio, voting record), ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told the Georgetown audience the surveillance "can and must comply" with the law requiring warrants from the special court. However, she supported the need to conduct electronic eavesdropping to combat terrorism.
Specter's committee will continue to probe the program's legality at a Feb. 28 hearing. The Justice Department strongly discouraged him from calling former Attorney General John Ashcroft and his deputy, James Comey, to testify about the surveillance program.
Just as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales could not talk about the administration's internal deliberations when he appeared before the committee earlier this month, neither can Ashcroft nor Comey, Assistant Attorney General William Moschella said in a letter to Specter.
___
Associated Press writers Jennifer Loven, Mark Sherman and Larry Margasak contributed to this report.
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.
February 18, 2006
Senate Chairman Splits With Bush on Spy Program
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON, Feb. 17 — The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Friday that he wanted the Bush administration's domestic eavesdropping program brought under the authority of a special intelligence court, a move President Bush has argued is not necessary.
The chairman, Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, said he had some concerns that the court could not issue warrants quickly enough to keep up with the needs of the eavesdropping program. But he said he would like to see those details worked out.
Mr. Roberts also said he did not believe that exempting the program from the purview of the court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act "would be met with much support" on Capitol Hill. Yet that is exactly the approach the Bush administration is pursuing.
"I think it should come before the FISA court, but I don't know how it works," Mr. Roberts said. "You don't want to have a situation where you have capability that doesn't work well with the FISA court, in terms of speed and agility and hot pursuit. So we have to solve that problem."
Mr. Roberts spoke in an interview a day after announcing that the White House, in a turnabout, had agreed to open discussions about changing surveillance law. By Friday, with Mr. Roberts apparently stung by accusations that he had caved to White House pressure not to investigate the eavesdropping without warrants, it appeared the talks could put the White House and Congress on a collision course.
White House officials favor a proposal offered by another Republican senator, Mike DeWine of Ohio, whose bill would exempt the eavesdropping from the intelligence court. Mr. DeWine wants small subcommittees to oversee the wiretapping, but Mr. Roberts said he would like the full House and Senate Intelligence Committees to have regular briefings.
"I think it's the function and the oversight responsibility of the committee," he said, adding, "That might sound strange coming from me."
Mr. Roberts's comments were surprising because he has been a staunch defender of the program and an ally of White House efforts to resist a full-scale Senate investigation. On Thursday, he pushed back a committee vote on a Democratic push to conduct an inquiry, saying he wanted to give the White House time to negotiate on possible legislation. On Friday, he dismissed accusations that he had bowed to pressure.
"The irony of this is that it is portrayed now as administration pressure brought to bear on us, meaning the Republicans on the committee and basically me," Mr. Roberts said Friday. "It's just the reverse. It's the Republicans on the committee, my staff and myself, who have been really — I don't want to say pressuring, but trying to come up with a reasonable compromise that will settle this issue. It was our activity that brought them along to this point, plus the possibility of an investigation."
The eavesdropping, authorized in secret by President Bush soon after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has allowed the National Security Agency to monitor the international telephone and e-mail communications of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people within the United States — without warrants — when the authorities suspect they have links to terrorists.
Democrats and a growing number of Republicans say the program appears to violate the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Some Republicans are also skeptical of the Bush administration's assertion that it has the inherent constitutional authority to conduct the eavesdropping, and that Congress authorized the program when it passed a resolution after Sept. 11 giving Mr. Bush authority to use military force to defend the nation.
In the House, Republicans on the Intelligence Committee have agreed to open an inquiry prompted by the surveillance program and are debating how broad it should be. Mr. Roberts said he had not spoken to Representative Peter Hoekstra, the Michigan Republican who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, about what the House panel is doing.
Representative Heather A. Wilson, Republican of New Mexico and chairwoman of the House Intelligence subcommittee that oversees the National Security Agency, has pressed for a broad investigation, but Mr. Hoekstra's aides have said that any inquiry would be limited to an examination of the FISA law.
The Senate intelligence chairman, Mr. Roberts, said he believed the administration had the constitutional authority for the program, but added, "We would be much more in concert with the Congress and everybody else and the FISA court judges" if the court oversaw the program.
As panel chairman, Mr. Roberts holds great sway. An aide to the senator said he had some specific ideas that he had been privately discussing with committee members and other lawmakers. But neither the senator nor the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the negotiations, would make those ideas public.
Nor will Mr. Roberts have final say over what form legislation will take; rather, his ideas are circulating in an environment that one Congressional aide, referring to the Winter Olympic Games, said was "sort of like snowboardcross, with four proposals shooting out of the gate, jockeying for position."
Another senior Senate Republican, Arlen Specter, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has proposed legislation that would allow the FISA court to pass judgment on the program's constitutionality. And Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine and a member of the intelligence panel, said Friday that she believed the eavesdropping must come under the purview of the judiciary.
"I think we do have to have judicial review," she said, adding, "Whether it's the FISA approach or not I think remains in question, but it can't go on in perpetuity, and it can't be unfettered warrantless surveillance."
Whether Republicans can agree remains to be seen. "People are all over the place," Mr. DeWine said. "We don't have a consensus."
The White House has been in talks with Mr. DeWine, who said Harriet E. Miers, the White House counsel, called him on Wednesday night, on the eve of the Senate Intelligence panel's scheduled vote, to discuss his legislation.
"What we have talked about with some Congressional leaders is codifying into law what his authority already is," Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman said in an interview Friday, referring to the president. He added, "Senator DeWine has some good ideas, and we think they're reasonable ideas."
Since the program's inception, the White House has provided information about it to members of the "Gang of Eight," the Democratic and Republican leaders of the House and Senate, and the senior Democrat and Republican on the intelligence panels in both chambers. Last week, the Bush administration went further, revealing details of the program to all members of the House and Senate intelligence panels.
Mr. DeWine said his proposal called for an intelligence subcommittee with "professional staff" to have oversight. "It would be fundamentally different than doing it by the Gang of Eight, where there's really no staff," he said, adding, "The key is oversight."
Elisabeth Bumiller contributed reporting for this article.
Copyright 2006The New York Times
Senate Chairman Splits With Bush on Spy Program
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON, Feb. 17 — The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Friday that he wanted the Bush administration's domestic eavesdropping program brought under the authority of a special intelligence court, a move President Bush has argued is not necessary.
The chairman, Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, said he had some concerns that the court could not issue warrants quickly enough to keep up with the needs of the eavesdropping program. But he said he would like to see those details worked out.
Mr. Roberts also said he did not believe that exempting the program from the purview of the court created by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act "would be met with much support" on Capitol Hill. Yet that is exactly the approach the Bush administration is pursuing.
"I think it should come before the FISA court, but I don't know how it works," Mr. Roberts said. "You don't want to have a situation where you have capability that doesn't work well with the FISA court, in terms of speed and agility and hot pursuit. So we have to solve that problem."
Mr. Roberts spoke in an interview a day after announcing that the White House, in a turnabout, had agreed to open discussions about changing surveillance law. By Friday, with Mr. Roberts apparently stung by accusations that he had caved to White House pressure not to investigate the eavesdropping without warrants, it appeared the talks could put the White House and Congress on a collision course.
White House officials favor a proposal offered by another Republican senator, Mike DeWine of Ohio, whose bill would exempt the eavesdropping from the intelligence court. Mr. DeWine wants small subcommittees to oversee the wiretapping, but Mr. Roberts said he would like the full House and Senate Intelligence Committees to have regular briefings.
"I think it's the function and the oversight responsibility of the committee," he said, adding, "That might sound strange coming from me."
Mr. Roberts's comments were surprising because he has been a staunch defender of the program and an ally of White House efforts to resist a full-scale Senate investigation. On Thursday, he pushed back a committee vote on a Democratic push to conduct an inquiry, saying he wanted to give the White House time to negotiate on possible legislation. On Friday, he dismissed accusations that he had bowed to pressure.
"The irony of this is that it is portrayed now as administration pressure brought to bear on us, meaning the Republicans on the committee and basically me," Mr. Roberts said Friday. "It's just the reverse. It's the Republicans on the committee, my staff and myself, who have been really — I don't want to say pressuring, but trying to come up with a reasonable compromise that will settle this issue. It was our activity that brought them along to this point, plus the possibility of an investigation."
The eavesdropping, authorized in secret by President Bush soon after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has allowed the National Security Agency to monitor the international telephone and e-mail communications of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people within the United States — without warrants — when the authorities suspect they have links to terrorists.
Democrats and a growing number of Republicans say the program appears to violate the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Some Republicans are also skeptical of the Bush administration's assertion that it has the inherent constitutional authority to conduct the eavesdropping, and that Congress authorized the program when it passed a resolution after Sept. 11 giving Mr. Bush authority to use military force to defend the nation.
In the House, Republicans on the Intelligence Committee have agreed to open an inquiry prompted by the surveillance program and are debating how broad it should be. Mr. Roberts said he had not spoken to Representative Peter Hoekstra, the Michigan Republican who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, about what the House panel is doing.
Representative Heather A. Wilson, Republican of New Mexico and chairwoman of the House Intelligence subcommittee that oversees the National Security Agency, has pressed for a broad investigation, but Mr. Hoekstra's aides have said that any inquiry would be limited to an examination of the FISA law.
The Senate intelligence chairman, Mr. Roberts, said he believed the administration had the constitutional authority for the program, but added, "We would be much more in concert with the Congress and everybody else and the FISA court judges" if the court oversaw the program.
As panel chairman, Mr. Roberts holds great sway. An aide to the senator said he had some specific ideas that he had been privately discussing with committee members and other lawmakers. But neither the senator nor the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the negotiations, would make those ideas public.
Nor will Mr. Roberts have final say over what form legislation will take; rather, his ideas are circulating in an environment that one Congressional aide, referring to the Winter Olympic Games, said was "sort of like snowboardcross, with four proposals shooting out of the gate, jockeying for position."
Another senior Senate Republican, Arlen Specter, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has proposed legislation that would allow the FISA court to pass judgment on the program's constitutionality. And Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine and a member of the intelligence panel, said Friday that she believed the eavesdropping must come under the purview of the judiciary.
"I think we do have to have judicial review," she said, adding, "Whether it's the FISA approach or not I think remains in question, but it can't go on in perpetuity, and it can't be unfettered warrantless surveillance."
Whether Republicans can agree remains to be seen. "People are all over the place," Mr. DeWine said. "We don't have a consensus."
The White House has been in talks with Mr. DeWine, who said Harriet E. Miers, the White House counsel, called him on Wednesday night, on the eve of the Senate Intelligence panel's scheduled vote, to discuss his legislation.
"What we have talked about with some Congressional leaders is codifying into law what his authority already is," Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman said in an interview Friday, referring to the president. He added, "Senator DeWine has some good ideas, and we think they're reasonable ideas."
Since the program's inception, the White House has provided information about it to members of the "Gang of Eight," the Democratic and Republican leaders of the House and Senate, and the senior Democrat and Republican on the intelligence panels in both chambers. Last week, the Bush administration went further, revealing details of the program to all members of the House and Senate intelligence panels.
Mr. DeWine said his proposal called for an intelligence subcommittee with "professional staff" to have oversight. "It would be fundamentally different than doing it by the Gang of Eight, where there's really no staff," he said, adding, "The key is oversight."
Elisabeth Bumiller contributed reporting for this article.
Copyright 2006The New York Times
February 20, 2006
Facing Pressure, White House Seeks Approval for Spying
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and DAVID E. SANGER
After two months of insisting that President Bush did not need court approval to authorize the wiretapping of calls between the United States and suspected terrorists abroad, the administration is trying to resist pressure for judicial review while pushing for retroactive Congressional approval of the program.
The administration opened negotiations with Congress last week, but it is far from clear whether Mr. Bush will be able to fend off calls from Democrats and some Republicans for increased oversight of the eavesdropping program, which is run by the National Security Agency.
The latest Republican to join the growing chorus of those seeking oversight is Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
In an interview on "Fox News Sunday," Mr. Graham, a former military prosecutor whose opinion on national security commands respect in the Senate, said he believed there was now a "bipartisan consensus" to have broader Congressional and judicial review of the program.
"I do believe we can provide oversight in a meaningful way without compromising the program," he said, "and I am adamant that the courts have some role when it comes to warrants. If you're going to follow an American citizen around for an extended period of time believing they're collaborating with the enemy, at some point in time, you need to get some judicial review, because mistakes can be made."
Four other leading Senate Republicans, including the heads of three committees — Judiciary, Homeland Security and Intelligence — have said they would prefer some degree of judicial oversight. Their positions, if they hold, could make the negotiations more difficult.
The White House is hoping that talks will lead to legislation to approve the program, much as Congress eventually approved Abraham Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War. Mr. Bush expanded on his defense of the program in Tampa, Fla., on Friday, saying he believed that he had to take extraordinary steps in a time of war.
"Unfortunately, we're having this discussion," he said of the debate over wiretapping. "It's too bad, because guess who listens to the discussion: the enemy."
He added: "The enemy is adjusting. But I'm going to tell you something. I'm doing the right thing. Washington is a town that says, you didn't connect the dots, and then when you do connect the dots, they say you're wrong."
But two days before Mr. Bush spoke, the White House opened the door to talks in the hope of avoiding a full-scale Congressional investigation. According to lawmakers involved in the discussions, a number of senior officials, including Harriet E. Miers, the White House counsel, and Andrew H. Card Jr., the chief of staff, began contacting members of the Senate to determine what it would take to derail the investigation.
The White House has refused to discuss those talks. Trent Duffy, a deputy press secretary, said the administration "does not want to negotiate in the media."
But some lawmakers have given glimpses of the conversations, including Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, a member of the intelligence panel who was prepared to vote with Democrats on Thursday to open an inquiry until the White House agreed to negotiate.
Ms. Snowe, who favors some kind of judicial review, characterized the talks as a "fundamental shift" in the debate. "I think there has been a quantum leap," she said in an interview, adding that senators were "really trying to wrestle the best way to craft a measured bill."
The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Pat Roberts of Kansas, has said he would prefer to see the program brought under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Mr. Roberts also says he is concerned that in an era of fast-paced electronic surveillance, the court may not be able to issue warrants quickly enough to meet the needs of the program.
Without offering specifics, Mr. Roberts spoke in an interview last week of "streamlining FISA" and said the N.S.A. would have to be involved in those negotiations.
Complicating the effort to reach a deal is the difficulty of surmounting the president's No. 1 objective: that no discussion make public the technology underlying the spying effort.
The Senate Intelligence Committee has given the administration two weeks to negotiate. If the White House does not demonstrate a good-faith effort, members say, the Democratic proposal for a full-scale inquiry will be back on the table at the panel's next meeting on March 7.
Republican leaders of the House Intelligence Committee have also agreed to some kind of inquiry, but there is a dispute about how broad it should be. Representative Peter Hoekstra, Republican of Michigan and the committee chairman, was traveling in Asia on Sunday and could not be reached for comment.
With Congress in recess for the next week, reaching an agreement on any legislation that contains concrete details seems unlikely. As Senator Mike DeWine, Republican of Ohio, said: "People are all over the place. We don't have a consensus."
Mr. DeWine is calling for legislation that would explicitly authorize the wiretapping and exempt it from the 1978 law that created the intelligence court to review classified applications for wiretapping inside the United States. The White House has embraced that concept, because it would take away the uncertainties of judicial review.
Mr. DeWine said he would also create small subcommittees of the Senate and House intelligence committees, with "professional staff," to oversee the program. "The key is oversight," he said.
It is unclear how Mr. DeWine's idea could turn into legislation without describing the surveillance program in some detail, which Mr. Bush has opposed.
Senate Democrats, meanwhile, are still demanding an inquiry. They also say that writing legislation will be impossible without knowing all the facts.
Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia and his party's senior member on the intelligence panel, said, "No member of the Senate can cast an informed vote on legislation authorizing, or, conversely, restricting, the N.S.A.'s warrantless surveillance program when they fundamentally do not know what they are authorizing or restricting."
Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, has drafted legislation that would require the FISA court to review the constitutionality of the eavesdropping program. Mr. Specter says he is sympathetic to the administration's concern that briefing lawmakers could lead to leaks, which is why he wants to turn the matter over to the courts.
But he insists that the eavesdropping must be subjected to a rigorous constitutional review and has said that anything short of that would be "window dressing."
Copyright 2006The New York Times
Facing Pressure, White House Seeks Approval for Spying
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and DAVID E. SANGER
After two months of insisting that President Bush did not need court approval to authorize the wiretapping of calls between the United States and suspected terrorists abroad, the administration is trying to resist pressure for judicial review while pushing for retroactive Congressional approval of the program.
The administration opened negotiations with Congress last week, but it is far from clear whether Mr. Bush will be able to fend off calls from Democrats and some Republicans for increased oversight of the eavesdropping program, which is run by the National Security Agency.
The latest Republican to join the growing chorus of those seeking oversight is Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
In an interview on "Fox News Sunday," Mr. Graham, a former military prosecutor whose opinion on national security commands respect in the Senate, said he believed there was now a "bipartisan consensus" to have broader Congressional and judicial review of the program.
"I do believe we can provide oversight in a meaningful way without compromising the program," he said, "and I am adamant that the courts have some role when it comes to warrants. If you're going to follow an American citizen around for an extended period of time believing they're collaborating with the enemy, at some point in time, you need to get some judicial review, because mistakes can be made."
Four other leading Senate Republicans, including the heads of three committees — Judiciary, Homeland Security and Intelligence — have said they would prefer some degree of judicial oversight. Their positions, if they hold, could make the negotiations more difficult.
The White House is hoping that talks will lead to legislation to approve the program, much as Congress eventually approved Abraham Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War. Mr. Bush expanded on his defense of the program in Tampa, Fla., on Friday, saying he believed that he had to take extraordinary steps in a time of war.
"Unfortunately, we're having this discussion," he said of the debate over wiretapping. "It's too bad, because guess who listens to the discussion: the enemy."
He added: "The enemy is adjusting. But I'm going to tell you something. I'm doing the right thing. Washington is a town that says, you didn't connect the dots, and then when you do connect the dots, they say you're wrong."
But two days before Mr. Bush spoke, the White House opened the door to talks in the hope of avoiding a full-scale Congressional investigation. According to lawmakers involved in the discussions, a number of senior officials, including Harriet E. Miers, the White House counsel, and Andrew H. Card Jr., the chief of staff, began contacting members of the Senate to determine what it would take to derail the investigation.
The White House has refused to discuss those talks. Trent Duffy, a deputy press secretary, said the administration "does not want to negotiate in the media."
But some lawmakers have given glimpses of the conversations, including Senator Olympia J. Snowe, Republican of Maine, a member of the intelligence panel who was prepared to vote with Democrats on Thursday to open an inquiry until the White House agreed to negotiate.
Ms. Snowe, who favors some kind of judicial review, characterized the talks as a "fundamental shift" in the debate. "I think there has been a quantum leap," she said in an interview, adding that senators were "really trying to wrestle the best way to craft a measured bill."
The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Pat Roberts of Kansas, has said he would prefer to see the program brought under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Mr. Roberts also says he is concerned that in an era of fast-paced electronic surveillance, the court may not be able to issue warrants quickly enough to meet the needs of the program.
Without offering specifics, Mr. Roberts spoke in an interview last week of "streamlining FISA" and said the N.S.A. would have to be involved in those negotiations.
Complicating the effort to reach a deal is the difficulty of surmounting the president's No. 1 objective: that no discussion make public the technology underlying the spying effort.
The Senate Intelligence Committee has given the administration two weeks to negotiate. If the White House does not demonstrate a good-faith effort, members say, the Democratic proposal for a full-scale inquiry will be back on the table at the panel's next meeting on March 7.
Republican leaders of the House Intelligence Committee have also agreed to some kind of inquiry, but there is a dispute about how broad it should be. Representative Peter Hoekstra, Republican of Michigan and the committee chairman, was traveling in Asia on Sunday and could not be reached for comment.
With Congress in recess for the next week, reaching an agreement on any legislation that contains concrete details seems unlikely. As Senator Mike DeWine, Republican of Ohio, said: "People are all over the place. We don't have a consensus."
Mr. DeWine is calling for legislation that would explicitly authorize the wiretapping and exempt it from the 1978 law that created the intelligence court to review classified applications for wiretapping inside the United States. The White House has embraced that concept, because it would take away the uncertainties of judicial review.
Mr. DeWine said he would also create small subcommittees of the Senate and House intelligence committees, with "professional staff," to oversee the program. "The key is oversight," he said.
It is unclear how Mr. DeWine's idea could turn into legislation without describing the surveillance program in some detail, which Mr. Bush has opposed.
Senate Democrats, meanwhile, are still demanding an inquiry. They also say that writing legislation will be impossible without knowing all the facts.
Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia and his party's senior member on the intelligence panel, said, "No member of the Senate can cast an informed vote on legislation authorizing, or, conversely, restricting, the N.S.A.'s warrantless surveillance program when they fundamentally do not know what they are authorizing or restricting."
Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, has drafted legislation that would require the FISA court to review the constitutionality of the eavesdropping program. Mr. Specter says he is sympathetic to the administration's concern that briefing lawmakers could lead to leaks, which is why he wants to turn the matter over to the courts.
But he insists that the eavesdropping must be subjected to a rigorous constitutional review and has said that anything short of that would be "window dressing."
Copyright 2006The New York Times
White House Working to Avoid Wiretap Probe
But Some Republicans Say Bush Must Be More Open About Eavesdropping Program
By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 20, 2006; A08
At two key moments in recent days, White House officials contacted congressional leaders just ahead of intelligence committee meetings that could have stirred demands for a deeper review of the administration's warrantless-surveillance program, according to House and Senate sources.
In both cases, the administration was spared the outcome it most feared, and it won praise in some circles for showing more openness to congressional oversight.
But the actions have angered some lawmakers who think the administration's purported concessions mean little. Some Republicans said that the White House came closer to suffering a big setback than is widely known, and that President Bush must be more forthcoming about the eavesdropping program to retain Congress's good will.
The first White House scramble came on Feb. 8, before the House intelligence committee began a closed briefing on the program, which Bush began in late 2001 but which was disclosed only recently. The program allows the National Security Agency to monitor communications involving a person in the United States and one outside, provided one is a possible terrorism suspect. The administration says the program is exempt from the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which provides for domestic surveillance warrants. Many lawmakers and legal scholars disagree.
The House hearing came a day after a prominent Republican member called for an inquiry into the wiretapping program, and two days after Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales had angered some senators by defending it without providing details. On Feb. 8, House members were grumbling that the administration apparently planned to have Gonzales, joined by former NSA director Michael V. Hayden, provide the same limited briefing to the House intelligence committee.
But the White House unexpectedly announced that Gonzales and Hayden would give the 21-member committee more insight into the program's "procedural aspects." The briefing placated many members. When committee leaders later said the panel will look further into the program, they made clear it will be a controlled process rather than the freewheeling investigation some Democrats want.
The second White House flurry occurred last Thursday, as the Senate intelligence committee readied for a showdown over a motion by top Democrat John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.) to start a broad inquiry into the surveillance program. White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. -- who had visited the Capitol two days earlier with Vice President Cheney to lobby Republicans on the program -- spoke by phone with Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine), according to Senate sources briefed on the call.
Snowe earlier had expressed concerns about the program's legality and civil liberties safeguards, but Card was adamant about restricting congressional oversight and control, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing office policies. Snowe seemed taken aback by Card's intransigence, and the call amounted to "a net step backward" for the White House, said a source outside Snowe's office.
Snowe contacted fellow committee Republican Chuck Hagel (Neb.), who also had voiced concerns about the program. They arranged a three-way phone conversation with Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.).
Until then, Roberts apparently thought he had the votes to defeat Rockefeller's motion in the committee, which Republicans control nine to seven, the sources said. But Snowe and Hagel told the chairman that if he called up the motion, they would support it, assuring its passage, the sources said.
When the closed meeting began, Roberts averted a vote on Rockefeller's motion by arranging for a party-line vote to adjourn until March 7. The move infuriated Rockefeller, who told reporters, "The White House has applied heavy pressure in recent weeks to prevent the committee from doing its job."
Hagel and Snowe declined interview requests after the meeting, but sources close to them say they bridle at suggestions that they buckled under administration heat. The White House must engage "in good-faith negotiations" with Congress, Snowe said in a statement.
Roberts, reacting to Hagel and Snowe's actions, told the New York Times on Friday that he now supports bringing the NSA program under FISA's jurisdiction in some manner, a stand that could put him at odds with the administration. The White House has praised a plan by Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) to draft legislation that would exempt the NSA program from FISA, while providing for congressional oversight.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said that Bush "is open to ideas from Congress regarding legislation, and we've committed to working with Congress on a bill."
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
But Some Republicans Say Bush Must Be More Open About Eavesdropping Program
By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 20, 2006; A08
At two key moments in recent days, White House officials contacted congressional leaders just ahead of intelligence committee meetings that could have stirred demands for a deeper review of the administration's warrantless-surveillance program, according to House and Senate sources.
In both cases, the administration was spared the outcome it most feared, and it won praise in some circles for showing more openness to congressional oversight.
But the actions have angered some lawmakers who think the administration's purported concessions mean little. Some Republicans said that the White House came closer to suffering a big setback than is widely known, and that President Bush must be more forthcoming about the eavesdropping program to retain Congress's good will.
The first White House scramble came on Feb. 8, before the House intelligence committee began a closed briefing on the program, which Bush began in late 2001 but which was disclosed only recently. The program allows the National Security Agency to monitor communications involving a person in the United States and one outside, provided one is a possible terrorism suspect. The administration says the program is exempt from the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which provides for domestic surveillance warrants. Many lawmakers and legal scholars disagree.
The House hearing came a day after a prominent Republican member called for an inquiry into the wiretapping program, and two days after Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales had angered some senators by defending it without providing details. On Feb. 8, House members were grumbling that the administration apparently planned to have Gonzales, joined by former NSA director Michael V. Hayden, provide the same limited briefing to the House intelligence committee.
But the White House unexpectedly announced that Gonzales and Hayden would give the 21-member committee more insight into the program's "procedural aspects." The briefing placated many members. When committee leaders later said the panel will look further into the program, they made clear it will be a controlled process rather than the freewheeling investigation some Democrats want.
The second White House flurry occurred last Thursday, as the Senate intelligence committee readied for a showdown over a motion by top Democrat John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.) to start a broad inquiry into the surveillance program. White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. -- who had visited the Capitol two days earlier with Vice President Cheney to lobby Republicans on the program -- spoke by phone with Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine), according to Senate sources briefed on the call.
Snowe earlier had expressed concerns about the program's legality and civil liberties safeguards, but Card was adamant about restricting congressional oversight and control, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing office policies. Snowe seemed taken aback by Card's intransigence, and the call amounted to "a net step backward" for the White House, said a source outside Snowe's office.
Snowe contacted fellow committee Republican Chuck Hagel (Neb.), who also had voiced concerns about the program. They arranged a three-way phone conversation with Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.).
Until then, Roberts apparently thought he had the votes to defeat Rockefeller's motion in the committee, which Republicans control nine to seven, the sources said. But Snowe and Hagel told the chairman that if he called up the motion, they would support it, assuring its passage, the sources said.
When the closed meeting began, Roberts averted a vote on Rockefeller's motion by arranging for a party-line vote to adjourn until March 7. The move infuriated Rockefeller, who told reporters, "The White House has applied heavy pressure in recent weeks to prevent the committee from doing its job."
Hagel and Snowe declined interview requests after the meeting, but sources close to them say they bridle at suggestions that they buckled under administration heat. The White House must engage "in good-faith negotiations" with Congress, Snowe said in a statement.
Roberts, reacting to Hagel and Snowe's actions, told the New York Times on Friday that he now supports bringing the NSA program under FISA's jurisdiction in some manner, a stand that could put him at odds with the administration. The White House has praised a plan by Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Ohio) to draft legislation that would exempt the NSA program from FISA, while providing for congressional oversight.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said that Bush "is open to ideas from Congress regarding legislation, and we've committed to working with Congress on a bill."
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/na...-home-headlines
QUOTE
Privacy Guardian Is Still a Paper Tiger
A year after its creation, the White House civil liberties board has yet to do a single day of work.
By Richard B. Schmitt
Times Staff Writer
February 20, 2006
WASHINGTON — For Americans troubled by the prospect of federal agents eavesdropping on their phone conversations or combing through their Internet records, there is good news: A little-known board exists in the White House whose purpose is to ensure that privacy and civil liberties are protected in the fight against terrorism.
Someday, it might actually meet.
Initially proposed by the bipartisan commission that investigated the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board was created by the intelligence overhaul that President Bush signed into law in December 2004.
More than a year later, it exists only on paper.
Foot-dragging, debate over its budget and powers, and concern over the qualifications of some of its members — one was treasurer of Bush's first campaign for Texas governor — has kept the board from doing a single day of work.
On Thursday, after months of delay, the Senate Judiciary Committee took a first step toward standing up the fledgling watchdog, approving the two lawyers Bush nominated to lead the panel. But it may take months before the board is up and running and doing much serious work.
Critics say the inaction shows the administration is just going through the motions when it comes to civil liberties.
"They have stalled in giving the board adequate funding. They have stalled in making appointments," said Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.). "It is apparent they are not taking this seriously."
The Sept. 11 commission also has expressed reservations about the commitment to the liberties panel.
"We felt it was absolutely vital," said Thomas H. Kean, the Republican former governor of New Jersey who led the commission. "We had certainly hoped it would have been up and running a long time ago."
The inaction is especially noteworthy in light of recent events. Some Republicans joined Democrats to delay renewal of the anti-terrorism Patriot Act because of civil liberties concerns. And the disclosure in December that Bush approved surveillance of certain U.S. residents' international communications without a court order has caused bipartisan dismay in Congress.
"Obviously, civil liberties issues are critically important, and they have been to this president, especially after 9/11," said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, adding that the White House had moved expeditiously to establish the board. "We do not formally nominate until we are through the background investigation and the full vetting. It takes time to present those nominations to the Senate. But now that they have been confirmed, that is a good thing."
The board chairwoman is Carol E. Dinkins, a Houston lawyer who was a Justice Department official in the Reagan administration. A longtime friend of the Bush family, she was the treasurer of George W. Bush's first campaign for governor of Texas, in 1994, and co-chair of Lawyers for Bush-Cheney, which recruited Republican lawyers to handle legal battles after the November 2004 election.
Dinkins, a longtime partner in the Houston law firm of Vinson & Elkins, where Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales once was a partner, has specialized in defending oil and gas companies in environmental lawsuits.
Foremost among her credentials, she told Senate Judiciary Committee members in a response to their questions, was the two years she spent as deputy attorney general in President Reagan's Justice Department. There, she said, she had to weigh civil liberties concerns while overseeing domestic surveillance and counter-intelligence cases.
The board vice chairman is Alan Charles Raul, a Washington lawyer who first suggested the concept of a civil liberties panel in an opinion article in the Los Angeles Times in December 2001. Raul, a former Agriculture Department general counsel currently in private practice, has published a book on privacy and the digital age and is the only panel member with apparent expertise in civil liberties issues.
The panel's lone Democrat, Lanny J. Davis, has known Bush since the two were undergraduates at Yale. Civil liberties groups regard the Washington lawyer, who worked in the Clinton White House, as likely to be a progressive voice on the panel.
The board also includes a conservative Republican legal icon, Washington lawyer and former Bush Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson, whose wife, Barbara, died in the Sept. 11 attacks. The fifth member is Francis X. Taylor, a retired Air Force general and former State Department counter-terrorism coordinator, who is chief security officer at General Electric Co.
The board members declined to comment for this article. Three referred calls to Dinkins, who referred calls to the White House.
The idea of such a watchdog agency was broached almost immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, as conservatives and liberals alike saw a need for the government to consider the implications of new and growing anti-terrorism measures.
The idea was to have professionals ask hard questions about whether the government was going too far in collecting and disseminating information about suspected terrorists, and to have those professionals make their views known in regular reports to the president.
The board was given a broad mandate to review the civil liberties effects of proposed regulations and executive branch policies related to the war on terrorism. It will report to Bush.
The law gives the panel access to classified information under certain circumstances, but not the power to subpoena documents. The board, which is within the Executive Office of the president, operates at the behest of the administration.
Civil liberties groups saw it as a promising first step.
"The board has the potential to be an important force in protecting civil liberties if the White House gives the board a role in the policymaking process, as Congress intended," the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington advocacy group, wrote at the time the law was passed.
So far, that potential has not been realized.
The Bush administration waited nine months to send the nominations of Dinkins and Raul to the Senate for approval. The three other members of the board did not require Senate confirmation, but they could not function without a chairman.
Doubts about funding also developed. The administration proposed an initial budget of $750,000, which lawmakers doubled. But critics consider that far from adequate. A similar board in the Homeland Security Department was initially proposed to have a $13-million budget.
Some members of Congress are concerned that the administration may still be trying to shortchange the board.
The fiscal 2007 budget that the administration released this month includes no express mention of any funding for it. That triggered a letter of protest from Maloney and Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) to the Office of Management and Budget.
A spokesman for the office, Scott Milburn, said in an interview that money was being requested for the board, but he declined to say how much.
Congress, which championed the idea of the board, also dragged its heels. Dinkins and Raul were officially nominated in September, when the Senate Judiciary Committee was busy with a Supreme Court nomination. The panel held a confirmation hearing in November, but only two of the 18 members showed up.
The committee finally approved Dinkins and Raul on Thursday without discussion. Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said his panel moved as quickly as possible considering its other duties, such as Supreme Court nominations, and considering the time the White House took in sending the nominations to the panel.
The top Judiciary Committee Democrat, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, said in an interview: "They seem to be good people. They have done good things in their lives. But they certainly don't bring any special expertise to what I consider to be an extremely challenging position."
But Durbin said he believed the board could still be a valuable addition to the debate over security and liberty as concern over the growing power of government after Sept. 11 cuts across ideological lines.
Dinkins asserted in her written responses to the Senate committee that the board would not be a pushover for the administration.
"The president will be best served if the board offers unvarnished and candid advice concerning whether counter-terrorism policies are developed with adequate consideration of privacy and civil liberties," she wrote. "It is critical that … the board get up and running as quickly as possible."
A year after its creation, the White House civil liberties board has yet to do a single day of work.
By Richard B. Schmitt
Times Staff Writer
February 20, 2006
WASHINGTON — For Americans troubled by the prospect of federal agents eavesdropping on their phone conversations or combing through their Internet records, there is good news: A little-known board exists in the White House whose purpose is to ensure that privacy and civil liberties are protected in the fight against terrorism.
Someday, it might actually meet.
Initially proposed by the bipartisan commission that investigated the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board was created by the intelligence overhaul that President Bush signed into law in December 2004.
More than a year later, it exists only on paper.
Foot-dragging, debate over its budget and powers, and concern over the qualifications of some of its members — one was treasurer of Bush's first campaign for Texas governor — has kept the board from doing a single day of work.
On Thursday, after months of delay, the Senate Judiciary Committee took a first step toward standing up the fledgling watchdog, approving the two lawyers Bush nominated to lead the panel. But it may take months before the board is up and running and doing much serious work.
Critics say the inaction shows the administration is just going through the motions when it comes to civil liberties.
"They have stalled in giving the board adequate funding. They have stalled in making appointments," said Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.). "It is apparent they are not taking this seriously."
The Sept. 11 commission also has expressed reservations about the commitment to the liberties panel.
"We felt it was absolutely vital," said Thomas H. Kean, the Republican former governor of New Jersey who led the commission. "We had certainly hoped it would have been up and running a long time ago."
The inaction is especially noteworthy in light of recent events. Some Republicans joined Democrats to delay renewal of the anti-terrorism Patriot Act because of civil liberties concerns. And the disclosure in December that Bush approved surveillance of certain U.S. residents' international communications without a court order has caused bipartisan dismay in Congress.
"Obviously, civil liberties issues are critically important, and they have been to this president, especially after 9/11," said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, adding that the White House had moved expeditiously to establish the board. "We do not formally nominate until we are through the background investigation and the full vetting. It takes time to present those nominations to the Senate. But now that they have been confirmed, that is a good thing."
The board chairwoman is Carol E. Dinkins, a Houston lawyer who was a Justice Department official in the Reagan administration. A longtime friend of the Bush family, she was the treasurer of George W. Bush's first campaign for governor of Texas, in 1994, and co-chair of Lawyers for Bush-Cheney, which recruited Republican lawyers to handle legal battles after the November 2004 election.
Dinkins, a longtime partner in the Houston law firm of Vinson & Elkins, where Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales once was a partner, has specialized in defending oil and gas companies in environmental lawsuits.
Foremost among her credentials, she told Senate Judiciary Committee members in a response to their questions, was the two years she spent as deputy attorney general in President Reagan's Justice Department. There, she said, she had to weigh civil liberties concerns while overseeing domestic surveillance and counter-intelligence cases.
The board vice chairman is Alan Charles Raul, a Washington lawyer who first suggested the concept of a civil liberties panel in an opinion article in the Los Angeles Times in December 2001. Raul, a former Agriculture Department general counsel currently in private practice, has published a book on privacy and the digital age and is the only panel member with apparent expertise in civil liberties issues.
The panel's lone Democrat, Lanny J. Davis, has known Bush since the two were undergraduates at Yale. Civil liberties groups regard the Washington lawyer, who worked in the Clinton White House, as likely to be a progressive voice on the panel.
The board also includes a conservative Republican legal icon, Washington lawyer and former Bush Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson, whose wife, Barbara, died in the Sept. 11 attacks. The fifth member is Francis X. Taylor, a retired Air Force general and former State Department counter-terrorism coordinator, who is chief security officer at General Electric Co.
The board members declined to comment for this article. Three referred calls to Dinkins, who referred calls to the White House.
The idea of such a watchdog agency was broached almost immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, as conservatives and liberals alike saw a need for the government to consider the implications of new and growing anti-terrorism measures.
The idea was to have professionals ask hard questions about whether the government was going too far in collecting and disseminating information about suspected terrorists, and to have those professionals make their views known in regular reports to the president.
The board was given a broad mandate to review the civil liberties effects of proposed regulations and executive branch policies related to the war on terrorism. It will report to Bush.
The law gives the panel access to classified information under certain circumstances, but not the power to subpoena documents. The board, which is within the Executive Office of the president, operates at the behest of the administration.
Civil liberties groups saw it as a promising first step.
"The board has the potential to be an important force in protecting civil liberties if the White House gives the board a role in the policymaking process, as Congress intended," the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington advocacy group, wrote at the time the law was passed.
So far, that potential has not been realized.
The Bush administration waited nine months to send the nominations of Dinkins and Raul to the Senate for approval. The three other members of the board did not require Senate confirmation, but they could not function without a chairman.
Doubts about funding also developed. The administration proposed an initial budget of $750,000, which lawmakers doubled. But critics consider that far from adequate. A similar board in the Homeland Security Department was initially proposed to have a $13-million budget.
Some members of Congress are concerned that the administration may still be trying to shortchange the board.
The fiscal 2007 budget that the administration released this month includes no express mention of any funding for it. That triggered a letter of protest from Maloney and Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.) to the Office of Management and Budget.
A spokesman for the office, Scott Milburn, said in an interview that money was being requested for the board, but he declined to say how much.
Congress, which championed the idea of the board, also dragged its heels. Dinkins and Raul were officially nominated in September, when the Senate Judiciary Committee was busy with a Supreme Court nomination. The panel held a confirmation hearing in November, but only two of the 18 members showed up.
The committee finally approved Dinkins and Raul on Thursday without discussion. Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said his panel moved as quickly as possible considering its other duties, such as Supreme Court nominations, and considering the time the White House took in sending the nominations to the panel.
The top Judiciary Committee Democrat, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, said in an interview: "They seem to be good people. They have done good things in their lives. But they certainly don't bring any special expertise to what I consider to be an extremely challenging position."
But Durbin said he believed the board could still be a valuable addition to the debate over security and liberty as concern over the growing power of government after Sept. 11 cuts across ideological lines.
Dinkins asserted in her written responses to the Senate committee that the board would not be a pushover for the administration.
"The president will be best served if the board offers unvarnished and candid advice concerning whether counter-terrorism policies are developed with adequate consideration of privacy and civil liberties," she wrote. "It is critical that … the board get up and running as quickly as possible."
I just heard the greatest quote from Laurence Tribe (Harvard
Law professor) concerning data mining, on C-Span:
"He's (Bush) not connecting the dots,
he's just collecting more dots."
Law professor) concerning data mining, on C-Span:
"He's (Bush) not connecting the dots,
he's just collecting more dots."
CONGRESS FUMBLES OVER WARRANTLESS SURVEILLANCE
On February 16, Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Sen.
Jay Rockefeller presented a proposal to investigate the National
Security Agency warrantless surveillance program.
A copy of Sen. Rockefeller's motion, outlining the scope of the
proposed investigation, is here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2006_cr/rockmot021606.pdf
But Committee chairman Sen. Pat Roberts blocked a vote on the
motion until March 7.
"If, by that time, we have reached no detailed accommodation with
the Administration concerning the Committee's oversight role, it
is possible that the Committee may vote to conduct an inquiry
into the program," Sen. Roberts said.
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2006_cr/roberts021606.html
"If we are prevented from fully understanding and evaluating the
NSA program, our committee will continue its slide into
irrelevance," said Sen. Rockefeller.
"Like Senator Rockefeller, I will not sit idly by and allow the
President's possible breaking of the law to be swept under the
rug," said Sen. Robert Byrd in a February 17 floor statement.
"I am today announcing my intention to submit to the Congress
legislation that will establish a nonpartisan, independent,
9-11-style commission to investigate and determine the legality
of the President's actions," Sen. Byrd said.
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2006_cr/s021706.html
On February 16, Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Sen.
Jay Rockefeller presented a proposal to investigate the National
Security Agency warrantless surveillance program.
A copy of Sen. Rockefeller's motion, outlining the scope of the
proposed investigation, is here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2006_cr/rockmot021606.pdf
But Committee chairman Sen. Pat Roberts blocked a vote on the
motion until March 7.
"If, by that time, we have reached no detailed accommodation with
the Administration concerning the Committee's oversight role, it
is possible that the Committee may vote to conduct an inquiry
into the program," Sen. Roberts said.
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2006_cr/roberts021606.html
"If we are prevented from fully understanding and evaluating the
NSA program, our committee will continue its slide into
irrelevance," said Sen. Rockefeller.
"Like Senator Rockefeller, I will not sit idly by and allow the
President's possible breaking of the law to be swept under the
rug," said Sen. Robert Byrd in a February 17 floor statement.
"I am today announcing my intention to submit to the Congress
legislation that will establish a nonpartisan, independent,
9-11-style commission to investigate and determine the legality
of the President's actions," Sen. Byrd said.
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2006_cr/s021706.html
White House Working to Avoid Wiretap Probe
By Charles Babington
At two key moments in recent days, White House officials contacted congressional leaders just ahead of intelligence committee meetings that could have stirred demands for a deeper review of the administration's warrantless-surveillance program, according to House and Senate sources.
To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...er=emailarticle
By Charles Babington
At two key moments in recent days, White House officials contacted congressional leaders just ahead of intelligence committee meetings that could have stirred demands for a deeper review of the administration's warrantless-surveillance program, according to House and Senate sources.
To view the entire article, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...er=emailarticle
I believe NSA leaked this...because they are tired of it.
I believe there are patriots at NSA who are disgusted.
They know they have a higher calling...a better way.
I'm with NSA...there are patriots at work. Never doubt it.
I believe there are patriots at NSA who are disgusted.
They know they have a higher calling...a better way.
I'm with NSA...there are patriots at work. Never doubt it.
http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism/view....20-015649-7679r
Emergency war supplemental hides millions
WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 (UPI) -- Buried in last week's $72.4 billion emergency supplemental appropriation bill for the war on terror is nearly half a billion dollars worth of military construction.
The bulk of the $485 million requested will go "to fund various military construction projects to support U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan," according to the supplemental. "The requested funds," the document goes on, "will provide force protection measures, enhanced airfield operations and safety, power distribution, water treatment and distribution infrastructure, operational facilities and improved logistics, and associated planning and design efforts."
But the supplemental also includes $35 million new money for the expansion of the National Security Agency's top secret listening post at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire, England, and authority to spend $700 million appropriated in previous years for construction or expansion of NSA facilities in Augusta, Ga., and Kunia, Hawaii.
© Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Want to email or reprint this story? Click here for options.
Emergency war supplemental hides millions
WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 (UPI) -- Buried in last week's $72.4 billion emergency supplemental appropriation bill for the war on terror is nearly half a billion dollars worth of military construction.
The bulk of the $485 million requested will go "to fund various military construction projects to support U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan," according to the supplemental. "The requested funds," the document goes on, "will provide force protection measures, enhanced airfield operations and safety, power distribution, water treatment and distribution infrastructure, operational facilities and improved logistics, and associated planning and design efforts."
But the supplemental also includes $35 million new money for the expansion of the National Security Agency's top secret listening post at Menwith Hill in Yorkshire, England, and authority to spend $700 million appropriated in previous years for construction or expansion of NSA facilities in Augusta, Ga., and Kunia, Hawaii.
© Copyright 2006 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Want to email or reprint this story? Click here for options.
Former Bush advisor defends White House spying powers
A controversial constitutional expert defended the White House's powers to authorize warrantless spying on Americans.
Korean-American legal expert John Yoo said that fighting Al-Qaeda type stateless terrorist networks justified an expansive view of presidential powers, including bypassing a special court which regulates domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency.
"We are confronting a new kind of enemy," Yoo said, speaking at the conservative Heritage Foundation. "The war on terror is in many respects a war of information," he said, referring to the spying program.
Yoo, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law, was the Deputy Assistant US Attorney General who co-authored the infamous August 1, 2002 "Torture Memo," a legal justification of President George W. Bush's authorization of treatment of war on terror detainees at odds with statutes and treaties prohibiting torture.
The memo, and other Yoo views on strong presidential power, have been embraced by the White House but objected by many members of Congress, constitutional scholars and civil rights groups.
Critics say that the White House and Yoo position effectively fractures the "checks and balances" by which Congress and courts limit the presidency.
Defending his views, Yoo insisted that not only did the original drafters of the 1789 constitution intend to give the president near-absolute powers -- all but those of budgeting -- in matters of war, but that also the character of the current war on terror necessitated such powers.
Yoo said the same powers allowed Bush to authorize the NSA's secret program to wiretap American citizens without special court warrants, as required by law.
But he added that such programs are necessary because "the best way to beat Al-Qaeda is fast information."
Yoo noted that courts had anyway the power to decide whether the information collected by the NSA was legally admissable in a trial.
Yoo also said the Congress still had the ability to regulate a powerful president by its control of government budgets.
"It is the power of the purse, the power of funding, that will give Congress a check on presidential adventurism."
"Congress could cut off tomorrow funding for the NSA program," he said, noting that Congress essentially stopped the Vietnam War by budget cuts.
Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AFP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Agence France Presse.
Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
A controversial constitutional expert defended the White House's powers to authorize warrantless spying on Americans.
Korean-American legal expert John Yoo said that fighting Al-Qaeda type stateless terrorist networks justified an expansive view of presidential powers, including bypassing a special court which regulates domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency.
"We are confronting a new kind of enemy," Yoo said, speaking at the conservative Heritage Foundation. "The war on terror is in many respects a war of information," he said, referring to the spying program.
Yoo, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law, was the Deputy Assistant US Attorney General who co-authored the infamous August 1, 2002 "Torture Memo," a legal justification of President George W. Bush's authorization of treatment of war on terror detainees at odds with statutes and treaties prohibiting torture.
The memo, and other Yoo views on strong presidential power, have been embraced by the White House but objected by many members of Congress, constitutional scholars and civil rights groups.
Critics say that the White House and Yoo position effectively fractures the "checks and balances" by which Congress and courts limit the presidency.
Defending his views, Yoo insisted that not only did the original drafters of the 1789 constitution intend to give the president near-absolute powers -- all but those of budgeting -- in matters of war, but that also the character of the current war on terror necessitated such powers.
Yoo said the same powers allowed Bush to authorize the NSA's secret program to wiretap American citizens without special court warrants, as required by law.
But he added that such programs are necessary because "the best way to beat Al-Qaeda is fast information."
Yoo noted that courts had anyway the power to decide whether the information collected by the NSA was legally admissable in a trial.
Yoo also said the Congress still had the ability to regulate a powerful president by its control of government budgets.
"It is the power of the purse, the power of funding, that will give Congress a check on presidential adventurism."
"Congress could cut off tomorrow funding for the NSA program," he said, noting that Congress essentially stopped the Vietnam War by budget cuts.
Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AFP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of Agence France Presse.
Copyright © 2006 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.
From John Dean, who knows a thing or two about illegal wiretapping.
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20060224.html
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20060224.html
QUOTE
Why Should Anyone Worry About Whose Communications Bush and Cheney Are Intercepting, If It Helps To Find Terrorists?
By JOHN W. DEAN
Friday, Feb. 24, 2006
Although the Bush Administration does not encourage public debate over decisions it has made regarding how to govern, more and more people are asking questions about the ways and means employed during this presidency.
In my last column, I addressed the seemingly irresolvable issue of the allocation of government powers - among the president, Congress and the federal courts - regarding matters of national security. Since then, the debate about the Bush Administration's refusal to comply with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act - and its parallel insistence on defending its warrantless wiretapping -- has only continued.
Both Republicans and Democrats have raised questions about the administration's defiance of the law in the name of fighting terrorism. One organization at the forefront of concern about this blatant lawbreaking is the ACLU - which recently convened a panel in Washington to discuss this subject. This broad-based dialogue, in which I participated, certainly added to my understanding. Not surprisingly, it raised issues that need further attention.
One, in particular, that has been gnawing at me, is the question why anyone should worry about the government listening in on conversations if they are doing nothing wrong. This is an old question that often arises in issues relating to privacy. Yet frankly, it still annoys me every time it is asked.
The Why-Should-I-Worry Question
The NSA surveillance program seeks to uncover persons in the United States who are conversing internationally and by telephone or email with known al Qaeda organization or operative abroad, or with affiliates of such organizations and operatives.
"I am not personally worried about the government listening to any of my conversations, for not only do I not know anyone even remotely connected with terrorism," one questioner said to me after the panel, "But furthermore, I would be happy to give up my privacy," she said, "if it helps to find terrorists." This young lady wanted to know why others were so concerned about the government's using the latest technology to find terrorists.
Let's set aside the issue of whether the President can simply ignore the FISA law validly enacted by Congress - and signed by a prior president. I will return to that in another, later column, for it is an important question that is not going to go away. Here, I will look only at the issue of whether the average American has anything to truly be worried about, as NSA electronically sifts through endless digital exchanges to find the proverbial needle-in-a-haystack.
One Reason Americans Should Worry: Data Mining Makes Mistakes
The details of the NSA surveillance program remain cloaked in secrecy. None of the experts with whom I spoke had any knowledge of its operations, other than what has been leaked, principally to New York Times reporter James Risen. In his book, State of War: the Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration - a fascinating and alarming read because it reveals ongoing incompetence within the intelligence community - Risen himself provides some details.
"The NSA is now eavesdropping on as many as five hundred people in the United States at any given time," Risen writes, "and it potentially has access to phone calls and e-mails of millions more." He adds that "NSA is now tapping into the heart of the nation's telephone network through direct access to key telecommunications switches that carry many of America's daily phone calls and e-mail messages."
Experts believe the way NSA is handling such masses of digital traffic is probably by what is called "data mining" - the use of computer algorithms to search automatically through massive amounts of data.
They also believe that the greatest threat that such non-human snooping has for the average American is that it frequently produces false positives. This is a point that was made by Jim Harper, Director of Information Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, during the ACLU's panel discussion.
Data mining's search tools, according to experts, are not particularly accurate at flushing out terrorists. Indeed, such electronic sleuthing frequently makes mistakes in who it tags as targets.
The government may claim data mining is accurate - but Americans ought to be wary: Even greater claims of accuracy are typically made for fingerprint identification, and that has already gone grievously wrong in one notorious war on terror example.
Fingerprints on a bag holding detonators involved in the 2004 Madrid subway terror attacks were supposedly linked to Portland, Oregon attorney Brandon Mayfield. As a result, Mayfield - also suspicious in authority's eyes because he'd converted to his wife's religion, Islam -- found himself in solitary confinement for two weeks as a "material witness." But in the end, the FBI was wrong; the prints weren't his.
With Data Collection Greatly Increased, Where Is All The Data Going?
Aside from the potential of mistakes, an even more serious problem is the remarkable increase in collection of data about Americans. While computers certainly make our life easier, and it is difficult now to imagine how we got along before the Internet, we pay a price in privacy for these marvels.
Literally gigantic amounts of digital data are being collected about almost every American: data that is connected to credit cards, airline tickets, motor vehicle licenses, health records, business records, satellite pictures of your home, and more. No organization gathers and hoards more private information than the federal government.
It was the mining of both privately-collected and government-collected data, that the Department of Defense's Total Information Awareness (TIA) program envisioned exploiting. Congress may have rejected the TIA program, but the technology has not been rejected. In fact, many believe it is being employed by NSA in its electronic surveillance of Americans. (If so, Congress may have been bypassed twice - with not only its passage of FISA, but its clear-cut rejection of the TIA program, ignored by the executive.)
With NSA listening to some five-hundred telephone calls at any given time and apparently potentially capturing millions others, mountains of digital information are accumulating. There is no oversight of the NSA program. And under the Patriot Act, the information NSA is gathering can be shared with other law enforcement authorities.
Many people trust the government not to abuse or misuse this information. Based on experience, I don't. But if you do, imagine what a hacker might do after cracking into all that private and government information - the kind of security breach that happens every day. Such hacking could trigger scenarios that range from blackmail to graymail to identity theft, to others knowing more about you and your life than even you may know.
If none of that bothers you, then you are an exception.
Americans Have Become Increasingly Concerned With Loss of Privacy
In 1970, only thirty-four percent of Americans were "concerned about threats to their personal privacy." By 1978, though, that number had reached sixty-four percent. In 1990, those concerned had risen to seventy-nine percent. In 1995, eighty-two percent of the American public was concerned, and the latest poll numbers for 2005 show close to ninety percent are concerned.
In short, if you are not concerned, you are a bit out of touch with reality. But not everyone believes there is wisdom in crowds.
Unable to find any breakdown by age, and taking into account the fact that mostly young people have raised this issue with me, I am inclined to believe it is the younger generation who are the ten percent who are unconcerned about their privacy. Indeed, one need only read some blogs, or view video blogs, that young people post to appreciate that we have spawned a generation of serious exhibitionists, who want to share their innermost thoughts (and personas) with the world. Maybe that is good, in an ironic way -- for personal privacy, and many other rights, may be on the way out. At least this one segment of the population won't feel the loss.
The jurisprudence of constitutional privacy is still relatively recent. And many scholars believe that rights such as the right of privacy - rights that we now take for granted -- although broadly embraced in the Bill of Rights, only acquired their current form following World War II - largely in reaction to the atrocities of Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia.
For example, the Fourth Amendment - which is at the heart of the debate over the NSA surveillance and data collection focused on Americans - has merely reverted back to what Akhil Amar argues its language requires: that searches need only be "reasonable." It was not until 1948 that Justice Jackson wrote in Johnson v. United States that "reasonable" was not enough for a search; rather the standard should be higher - "probable cause."
Jackson perceptively added, "The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers, is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime." In other words, it's for the courts, not the executive branch, to judge whether a search is legal.
Why did Jackson reach this conclusion? "Any other rule would undermine 'the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects,'" he explained, "and would obliterate one of the most fundamental distinctions between our form of government, where officers are under the law, and the police-state where they are the law." These distinctions sting in an era where the NSA has refused to operate "under the law" - that is, under FISA and, indeed, under the Fourth Amendment itself.
Jackson's reaction to the police-state (read: the state hallmarked by totalitarianism or fascism) is indicative of the rights that grew from these negative histories. As Richard Primus writes in The American Language of Rights, "Reaction against Sovietism and Nazism helped bring about major shifts in the rights of free expression, racial equality, and individual privacy. A new vocabulary of 'human rights' arose to carry the content of those political commitments and to link them with a broader idea rarely seen in the generation before the war but ascendant thereafter: that certain rights exist and must be respected regardless of positive law." Needless to say, positive law - in the form of statutes, and Supreme Court precedents interpreting the Constitution -- followed.
To those who don't worry about giving up their rights, programs like the NSA's may seem fine. But others of us appreciate the blood and treasury this nation expended, both indirectly and directly, in securing those rights. And I am convinced my generation will fight to the end to prevent the zeal of good intention in fighting terror, from letting the terrorists win by permitting the government to take those rights.
By JOHN W. DEAN
Friday, Feb. 24, 2006
Although the Bush Administration does not encourage public debate over decisions it has made regarding how to govern, more and more people are asking questions about the ways and means employed during this presidency.
In my last column, I addressed the seemingly irresolvable issue of the allocation of government powers - among the president, Congress and the federal courts - regarding matters of national security. Since then, the debate about the Bush Administration's refusal to comply with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act - and its parallel insistence on defending its warrantless wiretapping -- has only continued.
Both Republicans and Democrats have raised questions about the administration's defiance of the law in the name of fighting terrorism. One organization at the forefront of concern about this blatant lawbreaking is the ACLU - which recently convened a panel in Washington to discuss this subject. This broad-based dialogue, in which I participated, certainly added to my understanding. Not surprisingly, it raised issues that need further attention.
One, in particular, that has been gnawing at me, is the question why anyone should worry about the government listening in on conversations if they are doing nothing wrong. This is an old question that often arises in issues relating to privacy. Yet frankly, it still annoys me every time it is asked.
The Why-Should-I-Worry Question
The NSA surveillance program seeks to uncover persons in the United States who are conversing internationally and by telephone or email with known al Qaeda organization or operative abroad, or with affiliates of such organizations and operatives.
"I am not personally worried about the government listening to any of my conversations, for not only do I not know anyone even remotely connected with terrorism," one questioner said to me after the panel, "But furthermore, I would be happy to give up my privacy," she said, "if it helps to find terrorists." This young lady wanted to know why others were so concerned about the government's using the latest technology to find terrorists.
Let's set aside the issue of whether the President can simply ignore the FISA law validly enacted by Congress - and signed by a prior president. I will return to that in another, later column, for it is an important question that is not going to go away. Here, I will look only at the issue of whether the average American has anything to truly be worried about, as NSA electronically sifts through endless digital exchanges to find the proverbial needle-in-a-haystack.
One Reason Americans Should Worry: Data Mining Makes Mistakes
The details of the NSA surveillance program remain cloaked in secrecy. None of the experts with whom I spoke had any knowledge of its operations, other than what has been leaked, principally to New York Times reporter James Risen. In his book, State of War: the Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration - a fascinating and alarming read because it reveals ongoing incompetence within the intelligence community - Risen himself provides some details.
"The NSA is now eavesdropping on as many as five hundred people in the United States at any given time," Risen writes, "and it potentially has access to phone calls and e-mails of millions more." He adds that "NSA is now tapping into the heart of the nation's telephone network through direct access to key telecommunications switches that carry many of America's daily phone calls and e-mail messages."
Experts believe the way NSA is handling such masses of digital traffic is probably by what is called "data mining" - the use of computer algorithms to search automatically through massive amounts of data.
They also believe that the greatest threat that such non-human snooping has for the average American is that it frequently produces false positives. This is a point that was made by Jim Harper, Director of Information Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, during the ACLU's panel discussion.
Data mining's search tools, according to experts, are not particularly accurate at flushing out terrorists. Indeed, such electronic sleuthing frequently makes mistakes in who it tags as targets.
The government may claim data mining is accurate - but Americans ought to be wary: Even greater claims of accuracy are typically made for fingerprint identification, and that has already gone grievously wrong in one notorious war on terror example.
Fingerprints on a bag holding detonators involved in the 2004 Madrid subway terror attacks were supposedly linked to Portland, Oregon attorney Brandon Mayfield. As a result, Mayfield - also suspicious in authority's eyes because he'd converted to his wife's religion, Islam -- found himself in solitary confinement for two weeks as a "material witness." But in the end, the FBI was wrong; the prints weren't his.
With Data Collection Greatly Increased, Where Is All The Data Going?
Aside from the potential of mistakes, an even more serious problem is the remarkable increase in collection of data about Americans. While computers certainly make our life easier, and it is difficult now to imagine how we got along before the Internet, we pay a price in privacy for these marvels.
Literally gigantic amounts of digital data are being collected about almost every American: data that is connected to credit cards, airline tickets, motor vehicle licenses, health records, business records, satellite pictures of your home, and more. No organization gathers and hoards more private information than the federal government.
It was the mining of both privately-collected and government-collected data, that the Department of Defense's Total Information Awareness (TIA) program envisioned exploiting. Congress may have rejected the TIA program, but the technology has not been rejected. In fact, many believe it is being employed by NSA in its electronic surveillance of Americans. (If so, Congress may have been bypassed twice - with not only its passage of FISA, but its clear-cut rejection of the TIA program, ignored by the executive.)
With NSA listening to some five-hundred telephone calls at any given time and apparently potentially capturing millions others, mountains of digital information are accumulating. There is no oversight of the NSA program. And under the Patriot Act, the information NSA is gathering can be shared with other law enforcement authorities.
Many people trust the government not to abuse or misuse this information. Based on experience, I don't. But if you do, imagine what a hacker might do after cracking into all that private and government information - the kind of security breach that happens every day. Such hacking could trigger scenarios that range from blackmail to graymail to identity theft, to others knowing more about you and your life than even you may know.
If none of that bothers you, then you are an exception.
Americans Have Become Increasingly Concerned With Loss of Privacy
In 1970, only thirty-four percent of Americans were "concerned about threats to their personal privacy." By 1978, though, that number had reached sixty-four percent. In 1990, those concerned had risen to seventy-nine percent. In 1995, eighty-two percent of the American public was concerned, and the latest poll numbers for 2005 show close to ninety percent are concerned.
In short, if you are not concerned, you are a bit out of touch with reality. But not everyone believes there is wisdom in crowds.
Unable to find any breakdown by age, and taking into account the fact that mostly young people have raised this issue with me, I am inclined to believe it is the younger generation who are the ten percent who are unconcerned about their privacy. Indeed, one need only read some blogs, or view video blogs, that young people post to appreciate that we have spawned a generation of serious exhibitionists, who want to share their innermost thoughts (and personas) with the world. Maybe that is good, in an ironic way -- for personal privacy, and many other rights, may be on the way out. At least this one segment of the population won't feel the loss.
The jurisprudence of constitutional privacy is still relatively recent. And many scholars believe that rights such as the right of privacy - rights that we now take for granted -- although broadly embraced in the Bill of Rights, only acquired their current form following World War II - largely in reaction to the atrocities of Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia.
For example, the Fourth Amendment - which is at the heart of the debate over the NSA surveillance and data collection focused on Americans - has merely reverted back to what Akhil Amar argues its language requires: that searches need only be "reasonable." It was not until 1948 that Justice Jackson wrote in Johnson v. United States that "reasonable" was not enough for a search; rather the standard should be higher - "probable cause."
Jackson perceptively added, "The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers, is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime." In other words, it's for the courts, not the executive branch, to judge whether a search is legal.
Why did Jackson reach this conclusion? "Any other rule would undermine 'the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects,'" he explained, "and would obliterate one of the most fundamental distinctions between our form of government, where officers are under the law, and the police-state where they are the law." These distinctions sting in an era where the NSA has refused to operate "under the law" - that is, under FISA and, indeed, under the Fourth Amendment itself.
Jackson's reaction to the police-state (read: the state hallmarked by totalitarianism or fascism) is indicative of the rights that grew from these negative histories. As Richard Primus writes in The American Language of Rights, "Reaction against Sovietism and Nazism helped bring about major shifts in the rights of free expression, racial equality, and individual privacy. A new vocabulary of 'human rights' arose to carry the content of those political commitments and to link them with a broader idea rarely seen in the generation before the war but ascendant thereafter: that certain rights exist and must be respected regardless of positive law." Needless to say, positive law - in the form of statutes, and Supreme Court precedents interpreting the Constitution -- followed.
To those who don't worry about giving up their rights, programs like the NSA's may seem fine. But others of us appreciate the blood and treasury this nation expended, both indirectly and directly, in securing those rights. And I am convinced my generation will fight to the end to prevent the zeal of good intention in fighting terror, from letting the terrorists win by permitting the government to take those rights.
My take on this issue is as follows:
- Bush has broken the law in the way he has spied on Americans (because he did not obtain warrants either before or after the fact).
- In general, spying is needed--as long as proper oversight is done.
- If minor rules/laws need to change to meet evolving needs and new threats, fine, do so.
- A proper review needs to be done of all persons who were spied on without warrants. If all of these people were genuine persons of interest on the war on terror, then fine, all is well, and no formal punitive actions need to be taken against Bush (though of course there should still be political fallout for his incompetence in this matter). However, if it can be shown that Bush abused this program to spy on political opponents or media people (and possibly other kinds of conversations not related to the terror threats), then Bush should be impeached for these abuses of power. If Bush refuses to list EVERY person they spied on, then an investigation be initiated to force this info into the light of day.
- Bush has broken the law in the way he has spied on Americans (because he did not obtain warrants either before or after the fact).
- In general, spying is needed--as long as proper oversight is done.
- If minor rules/laws need to change to meet evolving needs and new threats, fine, do so.
- A proper review needs to be done of all persons who were spied on without warrants. If all of these people were genuine persons of interest on the war on terror, then fine, all is well, and no formal punitive actions need to be taken against Bush (though of course there should still be political fallout for his incompetence in this matter). However, if it can be shown that Bush abused this program to spy on political opponents or media people (and possibly other kinds of conversations not related to the terror threats), then Bush should be impeached for these abuses of power. If Bush refuses to list EVERY person they spied on, then an investigation be initiated to force this info into the light of day.
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0602i.asp
Trust the President?
by Jacob G. Hornberger, February 27, 2006
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that there are Americans who say, “Trust the president” with respect to spying on Americans, monitoring their conduct, and recording their telephone conversations without a judicially issued warrant. After all, there were those who said, “Trust the president,” when the president and his associates were scaring American grown-ups half to death with the imminent prospect of Saddam Hussein coming to the United States and exploding “mushroom clouds” over American cities. Throughout history, there have been segments of the populace in every society who, mostly out of fear, have said, “Trust our ruler. He will take care of us.”
But as the Framers understood, no one can be trusted with omnipotent power. No one. Not even “good” people.
Consider President Bush’s promise that he’ll employ his power to spy on Americans and record their telephone conversations only against genuine “terrorists” and not against ordinary, law-abiding Americans. One big problem with the president’s promise is that who exactly a “terrorist” is constitutes a very subjective determination. And given the paranoia and fear that inevitably afflict government officials in times of “crisis,” the scale defining “terrorism” inevitably slides toward people who simply oppose the policies of the government, especially as the fruits of such policies turn rotten and bitter.
Ask yourself: Why do government officials monitor anti-war protests and demonstrations? How likely is it that a person who is planning a terrorist attack is going to be speaking at or demonstrating at a public anti-war rally, where he knows that cops, secret agents, and cameras are all over the place?
The problem is that, as their policies begin to fail, the increasingly paranoid and fearful government officials come to believe that their “enemies” include those who are exposing the lies and false realities generated by the government. In the mind of the government official, telling the truth about government policy decreases morale and empowers the enemy.
Thus, people who oppose the government’s policies and tell the truth about such policies increasingly become part of the “problem.” They become a “threat,” one that can more easily be monitored and targeted than genuine terrorists can be.
Remember what the president said early on: In the war on terrorism, you’re either with us or against us. At some point, federal officials ask themselves the troubling question, “Where do those who expose and oppose federal policies fall within that equation?” And inevitably they arrive at the wrong answer to that question.
Thus, the most likely reason that the president isn’t going to the secret, rubberstamp FISA court to secure his warrants is that he and his minions know that they’re targeting Americans for whom not even the rubberstampers on the FISA court would approve a warrant. That is, they’re spying on and monitoring innocent Americans who aren’t “terrorists” but who oppose the president’s war on Iraq or his “war on terrorism” After all, since the secret FISA court rubberstamps virtually all warrant requests anyway, why else would the president not go through the motions of securing the rubberstamp?
Finally, it’s important to keep in mind that all this spying and other violations of civil liberties are just part and parcel of the U.S. Empire and its interventionist policies. That is, the policies, including the president’s invasion and war of aggression against Iraq, generate the anger and hatred that produce the terrorist counterstrikes, which then provide the president with the excuse to claim and exercise omnipotent power to fight the terrorists.
That’s why the ultimate solution to all this is not simply to force the president to obey the law with respect to search warrants but instead to abandon the imperial, militarist, interventionist, warlike course that has guided U.S. foreign policy for decades. As James Madison pointed out and as Americans are discovering, war is the greatest threat to our liberty because it encompasses all the other threats, including out-of-control government spending, violations of privacy and civil liberties, overgrown bureaucracies, and sometimes even conscription.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email.
Trust the President?
by Jacob G. Hornberger, February 27, 2006
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that there are Americans who say, “Trust the president” with respect to spying on Americans, monitoring their conduct, and recording their telephone conversations without a judicially issued warrant. After all, there were those who said, “Trust the president,” when the president and his associates were scaring American grown-ups half to death with the imminent prospect of Saddam Hussein coming to the United States and exploding “mushroom clouds” over American cities. Throughout history, there have been segments of the populace in every society who, mostly out of fear, have said, “Trust our ruler. He will take care of us.”
But as the Framers understood, no one can be trusted with omnipotent power. No one. Not even “good” people.
Consider President Bush’s promise that he’ll employ his power to spy on Americans and record their telephone conversations only against genuine “terrorists” and not against ordinary, law-abiding Americans. One big problem with the president’s promise is that who exactly a “terrorist” is constitutes a very subjective determination. And given the paranoia and fear that inevitably afflict government officials in times of “crisis,” the scale defining “terrorism” inevitably slides toward people who simply oppose the policies of the government, especially as the fruits of such policies turn rotten and bitter.
Ask yourself: Why do government officials monitor anti-war protests and demonstrations? How likely is it that a person who is planning a terrorist attack is going to be speaking at or demonstrating at a public anti-war rally, where he knows that cops, secret agents, and cameras are all over the place?
The problem is that, as their policies begin to fail, the increasingly paranoid and fearful government officials come to believe that their “enemies” include those who are exposing the lies and false realities generated by the government. In the mind of the government official, telling the truth about government policy decreases morale and empowers the enemy.
Thus, people who oppose the government’s policies and tell the truth about such policies increasingly become part of the “problem.” They become a “threat,” one that can more easily be monitored and targeted than genuine terrorists can be.
Remember what the president said early on: In the war on terrorism, you’re either with us or against us. At some point, federal officials ask themselves the troubling question, “Where do those who expose and oppose federal policies fall within that equation?” And inevitably they arrive at the wrong answer to that question.
Thus, the most likely reason that the president isn’t going to the secret, rubberstamp FISA court to secure his warrants is that he and his minions know that they’re targeting Americans for whom not even the rubberstampers on the FISA court would approve a warrant. That is, they’re spying on and monitoring innocent Americans who aren’t “terrorists” but who oppose the president’s war on Iraq or his “war on terrorism” After all, since the secret FISA court rubberstamps virtually all warrant requests anyway, why else would the president not go through the motions of securing the rubberstamp?
Finally, it’s important to keep in mind that all this spying and other violations of civil liberties are just part and parcel of the U.S. Empire and its interventionist policies. That is, the policies, including the president’s invasion and war of aggression against Iraq, generate the anger and hatred that produce the terrorist counterstrikes, which then provide the president with the excuse to claim and exercise omnipotent power to fight the terrorists.
That’s why the ultimate solution to all this is not simply to force the president to obey the law with respect to search warrants but instead to abandon the imperial, militarist, interventionist, warlike course that has guided U.S. foreign policy for decades. As James Madison pointed out and as Americans are discovering, war is the greatest threat to our liberty because it encompasses all the other threats, including out-of-control government spending, violations of privacy and civil liberties, overgrown bureaucracies, and sometimes even conscription.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email.
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0602j.asp
Illegal Surveillance: A Real Security Threat
by James Bovard, February 27, 2006
Americans seem to have forgotten why the Founding Fathers prohibited government from spying on them. Public opinion polls show that a rising percentage of Americans approve of the warrantless National Security Agency wiretaps of Americans that Bush ordered.
But such blind faith in government simply ignores the lessons of U.S. history. When the feds have unleashed themselves in the past, many innocent Americans’ lives were devastated.
During the 1960s and 1970s, the FBI carried out thousands of Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) operations, often combining illegal surveillance with efforts to subvert any opposition to the government. Covert FBI efforts sought to incite street warfare between violent groups, wreck marriages, portray innocent people as government informants, sic the IRS on citizens, and cripple or destroy left-wing, black, communist, or other organizations.
The FBI inflicted its wrath on speakers, teachers, and writers. A 1976 Senate report noted hundreds of COINTELPRO operations aimed “to get university and high-school teachers fired; to prevent targets from speaking on campus; to stop chapters of target groups from being formed; to prevent the distribution of books, newspapers, or periodicals; to disrupt news conferences; to disrupt peaceful demonstrations.”
The FBI smeared anyone they disapproved of, from Martin Luther King on down. In 1968 the FBI ordered field offices to gather information illustrating the “scurrilous and depraved nature of many of the characters, activities, habits, and living conditions representative of New Left adherents.” FBI headquarters commanded all FBI agents, “Every avenue of possible embarrassment must be vigorously and enthusiastically explored.”
Many Americans have shrugged off the recent controversy over illegal wiretaps because they assume that the government would never be concerned with people like themselves. But the FBI continually expanded its enemies list. Nixon aide Tom Charles Huston testified to Congress about COINTELPRO’s tendency “to move from the kid with a bomb to the kid with a picket sign, and from the kid with the picket sign to the kid with the bumper sticker of the opposing candidate. And you just keep going down the line.”
Boundless federal spying on Americans fundamentally changes the relation of the government to the people. The FBI’s efforts struck fear not only in average Americans but also in the members of Congress, who were supposed to oversee and check the FBI’s uses of its power. The House majority leader, Hale Boggs, explained in 1971, “Freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of action for men in public life can be compromised quite as effectively by the fear of surveillance as by the fact of surveillance.”
Other federal agencies also trampled citizens’ privacy, rights, and lives during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The IRS used COINTELPRO leads to launch audits against thousands of suspected political enemies of the Nixon administration. The U.S. Army set up its own surveillance program, creating files on 100,000 Americans and targeting domestic organizations such as the Young Americans for Freedom, the John Birch Society, and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith.
Many of these operations — like the current NSA wiretapping — scorned the Bill of Rights. The Fourth Amendment protects Americans against “unreasonable searches and seizures” and requires that government agents have a warrant based on probable cause issued by a magistrate “particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized” before intruding. The purpose of the Fourth Amendment was to prevent government officials from having “dictatorial power over the streets” and elsewhere — to restrain the arbitrary power of officials vested with the coercive power of the state.
Federal Judge Gerhard Gesell, in a 1974 ruling on illegal Nixon administration searches, observed, “The American Revolution was sparked in part by the complaints of the colonists against the issuance of writs of assistance, pursuant to which the king’s revenue officers conducted unrestricted, indiscriminate searches of persons and homes to uncover contraband.” Unfortunately, the revolutionary spirit now animating Washington is fighting to replace the right to privacy with the right to intrude.
If Americans permit their rulers to intercept their phone calls and email messages, then is there any abuse that people will not accept from Washington? Does the fact that someone works for the
Illegal Surveillance: A Real Security Threat
by James Bovard, February 27, 2006
Americans seem to have forgotten why the Founding Fathers prohibited government from spying on them. Public opinion polls show that a rising percentage of Americans approve of the warrantless National Security Agency wiretaps of Americans that Bush ordered.
But such blind faith in government simply ignores the lessons of U.S. history. When the feds have unleashed themselves in the past, many innocent Americans’ lives were devastated.
During the 1960s and 1970s, the FBI carried out thousands of Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) operations, often combining illegal surveillance with efforts to subvert any opposition to the government. Covert FBI efforts sought to incite street warfare between violent groups, wreck marriages, portray innocent people as government informants, sic the IRS on citizens, and cripple or destroy left-wing, black, communist, or other organizations.
The FBI inflicted its wrath on speakers, teachers, and writers. A 1976 Senate report noted hundreds of COINTELPRO operations aimed “to get university and high-school teachers fired; to prevent targets from speaking on campus; to stop chapters of target groups from being formed; to prevent the distribution of books, newspapers, or periodicals; to disrupt news conferences; to disrupt peaceful demonstrations.”
The FBI smeared anyone they disapproved of, from Martin Luther King on down. In 1968 the FBI ordered field offices to gather information illustrating the “scurrilous and depraved nature of many of the characters, activities, habits, and living conditions representative of New Left adherents.” FBI headquarters commanded all FBI agents, “Every avenue of possible embarrassment must be vigorously and enthusiastically explored.”
Many Americans have shrugged off the recent controversy over illegal wiretaps because they assume that the government would never be concerned with people like themselves. But the FBI continually expanded its enemies list. Nixon aide Tom Charles Huston testified to Congress about COINTELPRO’s tendency “to move from the kid with a bomb to the kid with a picket sign, and from the kid with the picket sign to the kid with the bumper sticker of the opposing candidate. And you just keep going down the line.”
Boundless federal spying on Americans fundamentally changes the relation of the government to the people. The FBI’s efforts struck fear not only in average Americans but also in the members of Congress, who were supposed to oversee and check the FBI’s uses of its power. The House majority leader, Hale Boggs, explained in 1971, “Freedom of speech, freedom of thought, freedom of action for men in public life can be compromised quite as effectively by the fear of surveillance as by the fact of surveillance.”
Other federal agencies also trampled citizens’ privacy, rights, and lives during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The IRS used COINTELPRO leads to launch audits against thousands of suspected political enemies of the Nixon administration. The U.S. Army set up its own surveillance program, creating files on 100,000 Americans and targeting domestic organizations such as the Young Americans for Freedom, the John Birch Society, and the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith.
Many of these operations — like the current NSA wiretapping — scorned the Bill of Rights. The Fourth Amendment protects Americans against “unreasonable searches and seizures” and requires that government agents have a warrant based on probable cause issued by a magistrate “particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized” before intruding. The purpose of the Fourth Amendment was to prevent government officials from having “dictatorial power over the streets” and elsewhere — to restrain the arbitrary power of officials vested with the coercive power of the state.
Federal Judge Gerhard Gesell, in a 1974 ruling on illegal Nixon administration searches, observed, “The American Revolution was sparked in part by the complaints of the colonists against the issuance of writs of assistance, pursuant to which the king’s revenue officers conducted unrestricted, indiscriminate searches of persons and homes to uncover contraband.” Unfortunately, the revolutionary spirit now animating Washington is fighting to replace the right to privacy with the right to intrude.
If Americans permit their rulers to intercept their phone calls and email messages, then is there any abuse that people will not accept from Washington? Does the fact that someone works for the