Progressive Talking Points 12/19/05

Spies Like U.S.

December 19, 2005

This weekend, President Bush ended speculation and acknowledged that he had personally authorized a secret, warrant-less domestic surveillance program. Not only are Bush’s actions contrary to the 4th Amendment, they also appear to be in violation of federal law. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requires a warrant or court order to conduct electronic surveillance. The Bush administration spent the weekend and this morning trying to justify Bush’s actions, but there is no excuse for blatantly violating the law. If the President believed the FISA was flawed, he should have gone before Congress and asked them to expand it.

• Bush’s program would not have prevented the attacks on September 11. Vice President Cheney said yesterday that if the U.S. had had the surveillance capability before 9/11 that it currently has, it might have been able to prevent 9/11 from happening. This is false – the Bush program did not give the NSA any new “capability” – it was already able to read your e-mail and listen to your phone conversations. All the NSA had to do was obtain a warrant from a special court created for this purpose. And from 1979 to 2002, the FISA court did not reject a single warrant, issuing 15,264.
  
  
• The disclosure of the program did not undermine national security. After the New York Times published its story, the Bush administration refused to confirm the existence of the surveillance program, citing national security concerns. On Friday, Bush said he wouldn’t comment on the story, because it “would compromise our ability to protect the people.” Within hours, President Bush did an about face and confirmed the program on his Saturday morning radio address and also provided details about how it worked. Seems the administration’s concerns were less about national security and more about public relations.
  
• Congressional intelligence officials were not told of the program. Condoleezza Rice and other administration officials defended the surveillance program, saying that congressional leaders (specifically "leaders of the relevant oversight intelligence committees") had been briefed on the NSA activities. However, this is apparently not true for Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL), Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who said he was never briefed on the program. He stated on Friday’s Nightline, “There was no reference made to the fact that we were going to...begin unwarranted, illegal, and I think unconstitutional, eavesdropping on American citizens.”