Bushco Rolled Out A Parade Of Liars To Squelch Lichtblau, Risen & NYT

(Cross Posted From Emptywheel)

A fairly significant article just posted at Slate by Eric Lichtblau on the jaded history of the publication, and withholding of publication for well over a year, of his and Jim Risen's seminal story on the criminal warrantless wiretapping by the Bush Administration. Some of it we knew, some of it we guessed and some of it is first impression. As a whole however, it is stunning to digest.

For 13 long months, we'd held off on publicizing one of the Bush administration's biggest secrets. Finally, one afternoon in December 2005, as my editors and I waited anxiously in an elegantly appointed sitting room at the White House, we were again about to let President Bush's top aides plead their case: why our newspaper shouldn't let the public know that the president had authorized the National Security Agency, in apparent contravention of federal wiretapping law, to eavesdrop on Americans without court warrants.
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As the door to the conference room opened, however, a slew of other White House VIPs strolled out to greet us, with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice near the head of the receiving line and White House Counsel Harriet Miers at the back.
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The risk to national security was incalculable, the White House VIPs said, their voices stern, their faces drawn. "The enemy," one official warned, "is inside the gates." The clichés did their work; the message was unmistakable: If the New York Times went ahead and published this story, we would share the blame for the next terrorist attack.
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That shared skepticism would prove essential in the Times' decision to run the story about Bush's NSA wiretapping program. On that December afternoon in the White House, the gathered officials attacked on several fronts. There was never any serious legal debate within the administration about the legality of the program, Bush's advisers insisted. The Justice Department had always signed off on its legality, as required by the president. The few lawmakers who were briefed on the program never voiced any concerns. From the beginning, there were tight controls in place to guard against abuse. The program would be rendered so ineffective if disclosed that it would have to be shut down immediately.

All these assertions, as my partner Jim Risen and I would learn in our reporting, turned out to be largely untrue.

Go read the entire article, it and you deserve nothing less. Here is a real tell tale quote that ought to have given the NYT boys all they need to know about the inherent dishonesty of the Bushies:

Consider the financial damage to the phone carriers that took part in the program, one official implored.

Well, the financial damage would be exactly zero if it were really a legal and necessary program. The Bushies knew it was illegal and immoral from the outset, or they would not have been carping this BS. Kind of a culpable comment and mindset from the outset eh?

There was one great little aside that

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Will Congress cave on telecom immunity, too, during the next FISA renewal?

Bush and intelligence meister Mike McConnell want telecom privacy lawsuit immunity as part of longer-term FISA renewal. And, judging by one Senate Democrat’s comment, it’s not a question of whether or not Congress will cave, just how much:

Democrats say McConnell's first draft of the immunity proposal is far too murky. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., an intelligence committee member, fears the language would go far beyond protecting private companies and their employees, also giving cover to any government officials who may have broken the law.
“I and others are going to make sure that anything that is done is done in a narrow, targeted way,” Wyden said.

Hey, Ron, how about not doing this at all? Why would you knowingly reward lawbreaking?

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Don’t Democrats know how to spell F-I-L-I-B-U-S-T-E-R? Or N-O C-L-O-T-U-R-E?

Instead of caving in to Bush on a drastic expansion of FISA powers, couldn’t Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid found 41 of his members who at least had enough conejos to reject a cloture motion?

Instead, this is the result:

Privacy advocates accused the Democrats of selling out and charged that this bill gives the government more authority than it had under a controversial warrantless wiretapping program begun in secret after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Under that program, the government could conduct surveillance without judicial oversight only if it had a reason to believe that one party to the call was a member of or affiliated with al-Qaeda or a related terrorist organization. This bill drops that condition, they noted.

Democrats “have a Pavlovian reaction: Whenever the president says the word ‘terrorism,’ they roll over and play dead,” said Caroline Fredrickson, Washington legislative director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Gregory Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology, predicted that the bill's approval would lead to the monitoring of ordinary Americans by the National Security Agency, which conducts most of the government’s electronic surveillance. “If this bill becomes law, Americans who communicate with a person abroad can count on one thing: The NSA may be listening,” he said.

Did Reid not even think of trying to prevent cloture, or otherwise using Senate procedural hurdles as roadblocks? And, as blogger Corpus Juris has said, where’s Reid’s You Tube moment on this?

Senate and House Democratic leadership had to know Bush was going to pull out all the rhetorical stops on this, and that Rove was likely to try to spin this for political gain. So why didn’t they have an advance counter-marketing plan? Here’s some possible talking points:

“Democrats want to TOTALLY protect Americans, including protecting their privacy.”

“Democrats have a better bill.” (And why they didn’t actually have one lined up a week ago, I don’t know)

“We know that Americans don’t want to surrender their privacy and other rights.”

Instead, Democratic Congressional leaders demonstrate that all too often, they are still being reactive rather than proactive. I think it’s about time for Skippy to repost his “no money for Democrats” post.

The House, I hold no hope for. I’m afraid that having gone halfway down the road with Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell before Bush pulled the rug from under them, and having seen the Senate cave, the House will too.

Cross posted at SocraticGadfly.

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FISA court ruling behind Bush attempt to expand wiretaps

According to Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, that’s why Bush is asking for expanded powers:

(House Minority Leader John) Boehner’s description of the scope of the ruling appears to focus on one key feature of the surveillance program—the large-scale tapping without warrants of telecommunications "switches" located in the United States; they are used to rout international calls even when both parties are overseas. But there are indications the ruling has in some instances interfered with the National Security Agency's ability to intercept phone calls where one of the parties is in the United States, as well.

Under President Bush's original executive order creating the surveillance program after the September 11 attacks, the NSA eavesdropped on such calls (including those with at least one party inside the country) without seeking specific warrants from the FISA court. …

At some point after the new program began, one of the FISA judges—who, by rotation, was assigned to review the program for periodic updates — concluded that some aspects of the warrantless eavesdropping program exceeded the NSA's authority under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. … The judge refused to reauthorize the complete program in the way it had been previously approved by at least one earlier FISA judge, the lawyer said, adding that the secret decision was a "big deal" for the administration.

Congressional aides said that Democratic and Republican leaders of the intelligence committees met until late Tuesday night trying to reach an agreement on a short-term measure that would grant some of the enhanced authority — including the ability to tap telecommunications switches without warrants — that the administration is seeking.

The even bigger problem, though, is that Bush wants Attorney General Alberto (V-05) Gonzales to have an oversight role. But, given his partisan hackery, there’s no guarantee he won’t try to use data mining from this program for political purposes. Given his perjury before Congress, there’s no guarantee he wouldn’t lie about having done that.

It’s good that Congress is resisting the expansion of NSA power on this ground. But, with this administration in place, I still say it should be resisting any expansion of NSA power, period.

Again, whatever restrictions BushCo is worried about didn’t seem to unduly restrict the Clinton Administration, and Congress needs to remember that.

Yet more on the ruling is in the L.A. Times and Washington Post.

The Times provides more detail on the court ruling:

(Some) officials said the ruling's reach was broader, affecting cases “where one end is foreign and you don't know where the other is” — meaning warrants would be required even when it was unclear whether communications were crossing the United States or involved a person in the United States.

One official said the issue centered on a ruling in which a FISA court judge rejected a government application for a “basket warrant” — a term that refers to court approval for surveillance activity encompassing multiple targets, rather than warrants issued on a case-by-case basis for surveillance of specific terrorism suspects.

The precise effect of the ruling is unclear, but a second official said that it “reduced the amount of intelligence we were collecting” on overseas terrorism suspects.

According to the Post, it sounds like Democrats are already ready to give away the store, with the exception of the Gonzo oversight issue:

Congressional Democrats outlined a temporary plan yesterday that would expand the government's authority to conduct electronic surveillance of overseas communications in search of terrorists.

The proposal, according to House and Senate Democrats, would permit a secret court to issue broad orders approving eavesdropping of communications involving suspects overseas and other people, who may be in the United States. To issue an order, the court would not need to identify a particular target overseas, but it would have to determine that those being targeted are “likely,” in fact, overseas.

If a foreign target’s communications to a person inside the United States reaches a “significant” number, then an court order based on probable cause would be required. It is unclear how “significant” would be defined.

It is truly both scary and fubar that Congressional Democrats would approve a FISA expansion with a blank check line item like failure to define “significant.”

At least a few Democrats still have their wits about them. From the Post story:

Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) said that the proposal, while better than the administration's, “does not have adequate safeguards to protect Americans’ privacy.”

It’s clear, and the Post makes it clear, this could significantly expand e-mail and phone snooping on American citizens and companies.

I also can’t believe that the Democrats don’t recognize that, through executive order or signing statement, Bush will try to make permanent any new provisions enacted in a temporary bill. I don’t care if the bill has a six-month “sunset” provision; I expect Bush would try to ignore that in any way possible.

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Dems to cave on expanded warrantless international call snooping?

That’s what The New York Timessays. But, giving this administration carte blanche to do ANYTHING without a warrant is stupid and even negligent, especially when BushCo says this is just Request Round 1:

The White House has told Democratic lawmakers that it will accept a narrow bill now but will come back later for broader changes, including legal immunity for telecommunications companies involved in the wiretapping program.

Congress needs to listen to voices like this, instead:

“Congress needs to take its time before it implements another piece of antiterrorism legislation it will regret, like the Patriot Act,” American Civil Liberties Union executive director Anthony Romero told the Times. “The Bush administration clearly has abused the FISA powers it already has and clearly wants to go back to the good old days of warrantless wiretapping and domestic spying. Congress must stop this bill in its tracks.”

Here’s one crux of disagreement right now, according to Raw Story:

A key point of disagreement between Congress and the administration involves how to audit the wiretapping of calls between two people outside the United States that are routed through US telecommunications switches.

Again, it’s simply unbelievable Congress would sign off on any of this.

Cross-posted at Socratic Gadfly.

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Judiciary Committee Poised To Issue Subpoenas On Warrentless Wiretap Program

The Senate Judiciary Committee has a full dance card next Thursday. In addition to dealing with assorted bills, resolutions, and nominations, it is going to consider "Authorization of Subpoenas in Connection with Investigation of Legal Basis for Warrantless Wiretap Program."

According to a Raw Story

"The warrantless wiretapping program has operated for over five years outside of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and without the approval of the FISA Court. The Committee has continued to ask for the legal justification for this sweeping and secret program, and has continually been rebuffed by inadequate and at times, misleading, responses from this Justice Department," said Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee. "The information we have requested has been specific to the legal justification for this program and is firmly within the Committee’s oversight jurisdiction."

The Rules Committee on Wednesday for Hans Von Spakosky. Thurdsday, the Judiciary Committee considers warrentless wiretap subpoenas. I hope the Senate air conditioning is turned down low. Next week is going to be hot, hot, hot.

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