Bush Orders Domestic Spying. - Page 8

**Shek** · 01-02-2006, 00:46 AM

An interesting debate between two legal experts from the Federalist Society on the issue:

http://www.fed-soc.org/pdf/domesticsurveillance.pdf

01-05-2006, 06:09 AM

Its all a big game. All the top news teams with 3 big letters play mix and match
with the acronym for Cental Intelligence. Has anyone really ever thought long and hard about how the word 'agency' got mixed up with 'central' in the middle of 'intelligence'? Get it?

Its about as valid as the myth that the Internet is ex-military hardware when its
not. Its consumer driven.

So Bush merely has to act miffed and thats good enough. Who leaked this
and who leaked that...blah blah blah..you did, you dumb ass!

If only he knew how to play poker.....

**Shek** · 01-09-2006, 10:17 AM

Miami Herald
January 8, 2006

56% Disapprove Of Secret Snooping

In an AP-Ipsos poll, 56 percent of respondents said the U.S. government should be required to get a court warrant to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens.

WASHINGTON - (AP) -- A majority of Americans want the Bush administration to get court approval before eavesdropping on people inside the United States, even if those calls might involve suspected terrorists, an AP-Ipsos poll shows.

In the past three weeks, President Bush and top aides have defended the electronic monitoring program they secretly launched shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, as a vital tool to protect the nation from al Qaeda and its affiliates.

Yet 56 percent of respondents in an AP-Ipsos poll said the government should be required to first get a court warrant to eavesdrop on the overseas calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens when those communications are believed to be tied to terrorism.

'We're at war'

Agreeing with the White House, about 42 percent do not believe the court approval is necessary.

''We're at war,'' Bush said during a New Year's Day visit to San Antonio. ``And as commander in chief, I've got to use the resources at my disposal, within the law, to protect the American people. . . . It's a vital, necessary program.''

According to the poll, age matters in how people view the monitoring. Nearly two-thirds of those between age 18 to 29 believe warrants should be required, while people 65 and older are evenly divided.

Party affiliation is a factor, too. Almost three-fourths of Democrats and one-third of Republicans want to require court warrants.

Cynthia Ice-Bones, 32, a Republican from Sacramento, said knowing about the program made her feel a bit safer. ''I think our security is so important that we don't need warrants. If you're doing something we shouldn't be doing, then you ought to be caught,'' she said.

But Peter Ahr of Caldwell, N.J., a religious studies professor at Seton Hall University, said he could not find a justification for skipping judicial approvals. Nor did he believe the administration's argument that such a step would impair terrorism investigations.

'Live by the law'

''We're a nation of laws. . . . That means that everybody has to live by the law, including the administration,'' said Ahr, 64, a Democrat who argues for checks and balances.

``For the administration to simply go after wiretaps on their own without anyone else's say-so is a violation of that principle.''

The eavesdropping is run by the secretive National Security Agency, the government's code-makers and code-breakers.

Charles Franklin, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said most people think the eavesdropping is aimed at foreign terrorists, even when the surveillance is conducted inside the country.

''They are willing to give the president quite a lot of leeway on this when it comes to the war on terror,'' said Franklin, who closely follows public opinion.

Some members of Congress have raised concerns about the president's actions, but none of those lawmakers who have been briefed on the program has called for its immediate halt.

**Shek** · 01-19-2006, 18:44 PM

My guess is that OBL just validated the NSA program. Whatever chance there was to stop it is now gone.

**Julie** · 01-19-2006, 18:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shek

My guess is that OBL just validated the NSA program. Whatever chance there was to stop it is now gone.

As bad as I hate to admit it.....I feel you are correct.

**Shek** · 01-19-2006, 19:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Julie

As bad as I hate to admit it.....I feel you are correct.

It wasn't a political winner for the Democrats before OBL's tape, since bringing up the issue meant highlighting the perceived Republican strength - national defense, and now it's definitely a political loser with OBL stating another attack is on the way.

OBL has been going for the Hail Mary pass on his past couple tapes, trying to replicate their success in Spain. However, they've misread President Bush and the American public.

**Shek** · 01-20-2006, 09:48 AM

Looks like the NSA story will be hitting the airwaves again with Congressional hearings coming up. I guess the Democrats are going to be holding partisan hearings today, and bipartisan hearings in the Judicial Committee of the Senate will be held soon. So, here are some primary source documents and some commentary/articles on them. The reports are from the Congressional Research Service, "a 'think tank' that provides reports to members of Congress on a variety of topics relevant to current political events."

Statutory Procedures Under Which Congress Is To Be Informed of U.S. Intelligence Activities, Including Covert Actions, January 18, 2006

Administration Paper Defends Spy Program: Detailed Argument Cites War Powers

Presidential Authority to Conduct Warrantless Electronic Surveillance to Gather Foreign Intelligence Information

Report Rebuts Bush on Spying: Domestic Action's Legality Challenged

They'll Be OK if No One Reads the Report

Dreadnought · 01-20-2006, 11:51 AM

IMO Nobody wants big brother spying on them and their lives. On the other hand most people really dont have anything to hide. Its a double edged sword. If it keeps my country and its citizens safe then im willing to go along with it. We can only hope it will be used to protect America and not used for political career killing among adversaries.

**Shek** · 01-24-2006, 11:58 AM

President Bush scores one in his speech yesterday

Quote:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/relea...0060123-4.html

I made the decision to do the following things because there's an enemy that still wants to harm the American people. What I'm talking about is the intercept of certain communications emanating between somebody inside the United States and outside the United States; and one of the numbers would be reasonably suspected to be an al Qaeda link or affiliate. In other words, we have ways to determine whether or not someone can be an al Qaeda affiliate or al Qaeda. And if they're making a phone call in the United States, it seems like to me we want to know why.

This is a -- I repeat to you, even though you hear words, "domestic spying," these are not phone calls within the United States. It's a phone call of an al Qaeda, known al Qaeda suspect, making a phone call into the United States. I'm mindful of your civil liberties, and so I had all kinds of lawyers review the process. We briefed members of the United States Congress, one of whom was Senator Pat Roberts, about this program. You know, it's amazing, when people say to me, well, he was just breaking the law -- if I wanted to break the law, why was I briefing Congress?

**Shek** · 01-24-2006, 23:36 PM

Some lengthy excerpts from AG Gonzales' address at Georgetown's Law School today:

http://www.usdoj.gov/ag/speeches/200...h_0601241.html

Quote:

In 2004, the Supreme Court considered the scope of the Force Resolution in the Hamdi case. There, the question was whether the President had the authority to detain an American citizen as an enemy combatant for the duration of the hostilities.

In that case, the Supreme Court confirmed that the expansive language of the Resolution —“all necessary and appropriate force”—ensures that the congressional authorization extends to traditional incidents of waging war. And, just like the detention of enemy combatants approved in Hamdi, the use of communications intelligence to prevent enemy attacks is a fundamental and well-accepted incident of military force.

This fact is borne out by history. This Nation has a long tradition of wartime enemy surveillance—a tradition that can be traced to George Washington, who made frequent and effective use of secret intelligence, including the interception of mail between the British and Americans.

And for as long as electronic communications have existed, the United States has conducted surveillance of those communications during wartime—all without judicial warrant. In the Civil War, for example, telegraph wiretapping was common, and provided important intelligence for both sides. In World War I, President Wilson ordered the interception of all cable communications between the United States and Europe; he inferred the authority to do so from the Constitution and from a general congressional authorization to use military force that did not mention anything about such surveillance. So too in World War II; the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt authorized the interception of all communications traffic into and out of the United States. The terrorist surveillance program, of course, is far more focused, since it involves only the interception of international communications that are linked to al Qaeda or its allies.

Some have suggested that the Force Resolution did not authorize intelligence collection inside the United States. That contention cannot be squared with the reality of the 9/11 attacks, which gave rise to the Resolution, and with the language of the authorization itself, which calls on the President to protect Americans both “at home and abroad” and to take action to prevent further terrorist attacks “against the United States.” It’s also contrary to the history of wartime surveillance, which has often involved the interception of enemy communications into and out of the United States.

Against this backdrop, the NSA’s focused terrorist surveillance program falls squarely within the broad authorization of the Resolution even though, as some have argued, the Resolution does not expressly mention surveillance. The Resolution also doesn’t mention detention of enemy combatants. But we know from the Supreme Court’s decision in Hamdi that such detention is authorized. Justice O’Connor reasoned: “Because detention to prevent a combatant's return to the battlefield is a fundamental incident of waging war…Congress has clearly and unmistakably authorized detention in the narrow circumstances considered here.”

As Justice O’Connor recognized, it does not matter that the Force Resolution nowhere specifically refers to the detention of U.S. citizens as enemy combatants. Nor does it matter that individual Members of Congress may not have specifically intended to authorize such detention. The same is true of electronic surveillance. It is a traditional incident of war and, thus, as Justice O’Connor said, it is “of no moment” that the Resolution does not explicitly mention this activity.

These omissions are not at all surprising. In enacting the Force Resolution, Congress made no attempt to catalog every aspect of the use of force it was authorizing.

Instead, following the model of past military force authorizations, Congress—in general, but broad, terms—confirmed the President’s authority to use all traditional and legitimate incidents of military force to identify and defeat the enemy. In doing so, Congress must be understood to have intended that the use of electronic surveillance against the enemy is a fundamental component of military operations.

Quote:

Some contend that even if the President has constitutional authority to engage in the surveillance of our enemy in a time of war, that authority has been constrained by Congress with the passage in 1978 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Generally, FISA requires the government to obtain an order from a special FISA court before conducting electronic surveillance. It is clear from the legislative history of FISA that there were concerns among Members of Congress about the constitutionality of FISA itself.

For purposes of this discussion, because I cannot discuss operational details, I'm going to assume here that intercepts of al Qaeda communications under the terrorist surveillance program fall within the definition of “electronic surveillance” in FISA.

The FISA Court of Review, the special court of appeals charged with hearing appeals of decisions by the FISA court, stated in 2002 that, quote, “[w]e take for granted that the President does have that [inherent] authority” and, “assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President’s constitutional power.” We do not have to decide whether, when we are at war and there is a vital need for the terrorist surveillance program, FISA unconstitutionally encroaches – or places an unconstitutional constraint upon – the President's Article II powers. We can avoid that tough question because Congress gave the President the Force Resolution, and that statute removes any possible tension between what Congress said in 1978 in FISA and the President's constitutional authority today.

Let me explain by focusing on certain aspects of FISA that have attracted a lot of attention and generated a lot of confusion in the last few weeks.

First, FISA, of course, allows Congress to respond to new threats through separate legislation. FISA bars persons from intentionally “engag[ing] . . . in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute.” For the reasons I have already discussed, the Force Resolution provides the relevant statutory authorization for the terrorist surveillance program. Hamdi makes it clear that the broad language in the Resolution can satisfy a requirement for specific statutory authorization set forth in another law.

Hamdi involved a statutory prohibition on all detention of U.S. citizens except as authorized “pursuant to an Act of Congress.” Even though the detention of a U.S. citizen involves a deprivation of liberty, and even though the Force Resolution says nothing on its face about detention of U.S. citizens, a majority of the members of the Court nevertheless concluded that the Resolution satisfied the statutory requirement. The same is true, I submit, for the prohibition on warrantless electronic surveillance in FISA.

You may have heard about the provision of FISA that allows the President to conduct warrantless surveillance for 15 days following a declaration of war. That provision shows that Congress knew that warrantless surveillance would be essential in wartime. But no one could reasonably suggest that all such critical military surveillance in a time of war would end after only 15 days.

Instead, the legislative history of this provision makes it clear that Congress elected NOT TO DECIDE how surveillance might need to be conducted in the event of a particular armed conflict. Congress expected that it would revisit the issue in light of events and likely would enact a special authorization during that 15-day period. That is exactly what happened three days after the attacks of 9/11, when Congress passed the Force Resolution, permitting the President to exercise “all necessary and appropriate” incidents of military force.

Thus, it is simply not the case that Congress in 1978 anticipated all the ways that the President might need to act in times of armed conflict to protect the United States. FISA, by its own terms, was not intended to be the last word on these critical issues.

Quote:

Finally, let me explain why the NSA’s terrorist surveillance program fully complies with the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.

The Fourth Amendment has never been understood to require warrants in all circumstances. For instance, before you get on an airplane, or enter most government buildings, you and your belongings may be searched without a warrant. There are also searches at the border or when you’ve been pulled over at a checkpoint designed to identify folks driving while under the influence. Those searches do not violate the Fourth Amendment because they involve “special needs” beyond routine law enforcement. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that these circumstances make such a search reasonable even without a warrant.

The terrorist surveillance program is subject to the checks of the Fourth Amendment, and it clearly fits within this “special needs” category. This is by no means a novel conclusion. The Justice Department during the Clinton Administration testified in 1994 that the President has inherent authority under the Constitution to conduct foreign intelligence searches of the private homes of U.S. citizens in the United States without a warrant, and that such warrantless searches are permissible under the Fourth Amendment.

The key question, then, under the Fourth Amendment is not whether there was a warrant, but whether the search was reasonable. This requires balancing privacy with the government’s interests – and ensuring that we maintain appropriate safeguards. We’ve done that here.

Bulgaroctonus · 01-25-2006, 00:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by shek

My guess is that OBL just validated the NSA program. Whatever chance there was to stop it is now gone.

I am going to enter this thread now. I have decided that this issue is very important. This is a good place to start.

1.) Osama bin Laden is a very intelligent man. After all, he orchestrated brilliant attacks against the United States on 9/11. He has also evaded capture by the U.S. This latter fact is not necessarily a product of intelligence. Instead, it is likely a product of the incredibly harsh terrain of Pakistan (where he is rumored to be) and the immense amount of support he has in the Muslim world (hence people are willing to hide him).

I find it hard to believe that he never considered that phone calls and other communications between his group, Al-Qaeda, and Americans would be monitored. That is, I think the publication of the New York Times story did not 'tip off' Osama bin Laden to the U.S. surveillance.

Bin Laden has been aware for a long time that the U.S. monitored Al-Qaeda cellular conversations, that is why that group discontinued that practice. I think Mr. bin Laden easily imagined that all paths of communication were scrutinized.

2.) Furthermore, the claim by the Bush administration that merely discussing the legality of the surveillance program aids Al-Qaeda is illogical. This is so simply because President Bush and his staff have repeatedly mentioned the program. After all, had not President Bush briefed Congress on the matter? If these briefings were public information, which they may not have been, then Al-Qaeda could have obtained information from there and the Bush Administration would be going against its own advice.

Therefore, even in the off chance that Al-Qaeda had no idea that it was being spied upon, I doubt that the New York Times article was the first place they found out about it.

I have found support of my opinion from Mr. Glenn Greenwald, a former New York City litigator. I advise all readers to examine his blog. It provides a powerful opinion backed up by legal and historical facts.

The blog:
http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2...orists-by.html

In case people don't care to read the blog, here is an excerpt that strenghthens my point 2.):

Quote:

But this same George Bush over the last two years -- as he campaigned for his own re-election and then as he campaigned for the permanent renewal of the Patriot Act – has repeatedly talked about, in detail, how we engage in surveillance against terrorists, how we try to eavesdrop on their communications, and what methods we have created and now use to monitor what they are doing and saying.

Quote:

In fact, Bush not only repeatedly disclosed over the course of the last two years the fact that we eavesdrop on the telephone calls of suspected terrorists -- the same disclosure which, when made by the Times last week, has supposedly done such grave harm to national security -- but Bush has done so in far greater detail than anything the Times said. Worse, Bush has made similar public disclosures with regard to countless other intelligence and surveillance techniques which we use against terrorists.

Closing Comments:

Quote:

There aren't very many things more likely to "harm national security" than using the term "national security" as a cynical political weapon used to depict political opponents as traitors and to intimidate others away from disclosing illegal conduct by the Government.

**Shek** · 01-25-2006, 00:41 AM

Some excerpts from the address of General Hayden, the NSA Director, on Monday:

http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2006/01/hayden012306.pdf

Quote:

Serious issues have been raised in recent weeks, and discussion of serious issues should be based on facts. There's a lot of information out there right now.
Some of it is, frankly, inaccurate. Much of it is just simply misunderstood. I'm here to tell the American people what NSA has been doing and why. And perhaps more importantly, what NSA has not been doing.

Now, admittedly, this is a little hard to do while protecting our country's intelligence sources and methods. And, frankly, people in my line of work generally don't like to talk about what they've done until it becomes a subject on the History Channel. But let me make one thing very clear. As challenging as this morning might be, this is the speech I want to give. I much prefer being here with you today telling you about the things we have done when there hasn't been an attack on the homeland. This is a far easier presentation to make than the ones I had to give four years ago telling audiences like you what we hadn't done in the days and months leading up to the tragic events of September 11th.

Quote:

Now, you're looking at me up here, and I'm in a military uniform, and frankly, there's a certain sense of sufficiency here -- authorized by the president, duly ordered, its lawfulness attested to by the attorney general and its content briefed to the congressional leadership.

But we all have personal responsibility, and in the end, NSA would have to implement this, and every operational decision the agency makes is made with the full involvement of its legal office. NSA professional career lawyers -- and the agency has a bunch of them -- have a well-deserved reputation. They're good, they know the law, and they don't let the agency take many close pitches.

And so even though I knew the program had been reviewed by the White House and by DOJ, by the Department of Justice, I asked the three most senior and experienced lawyers in NSA: Our enemy in the global war on terrorism doesn't divide the United States from the rest of the world, the global telecommunications system doesn't make that distinction either, our laws do and should; how did these activities square with these facts?

They reported back to me. They supported the lawfulness of this program. Supported, not acquiesced. This was very important to me. A veteran NSA lawyer, one of the three I asked, told me that a correspondent had suggested to him recently that all of the lawyers connected with this program have been very careful from the outset because they knew there would be a day of reckoning. The NSA lawyer replied to him that that had not been the case. NSA had been so careful, he said -- and I'm using his words now here -- NSA had been so careful because in this very focused, limited program, NSA had to ensure that it dealt with privacy interests in an appropriate manner.

In other words, our lawyers weren't careful out of fear; they were careful out of a heartfelt, principled view that NSA operations had to e consistent with bedrock legal protections.

Quote:

The purpose of all this is not to collect reams of intelligence, but to detect and prevent attacks. The intelligence community has neither the time, the resources nor the legal authority to read communications that aren't likely to protect us, and NSA has no interest in doing so. These are communications that we have reason to believe are al Qaeda communications, a judgment made by American intelligence professionals, not folks like me or political appointees, a judgment made by the American intelligence professionals most trained to understand al Qaeda tactics, al Qaeda communications and al Qaeda aims.

Their work is actively overseen by the most intense oversight regime in the history of the National Security Agency. The agency's conduct of this program is thoroughly reviewed by the NSA's general counsel and inspector general. The program has also been reviewed by the Department of Justice for compliance with the president's authorization. Oversight also includes an aggressive training program to ensure that all activities are consistent with the letter and the intent of the authorization and with the preservation of civil liberties.

Let me talk for a few minutes also about what this program is not. It is not a driftnet over Dearborn or Lackawanna or Freemont grabbing conversations that we then sort out by these alleged keyword searches or data-mining tools or other devices that so-called experts keep talking about.

This is targeted and focused. This is not about intercepting conversations between people in the United States. This is hot pursuit of communications entering or leaving America involving someone we believe is associated with al Qaeda. We bring to bear all the technology we can to ensure that this is so. And if there were ever an anomaly, and we discovered that there had been an inadvertent intercept of a domestic-to-domestic call, that intercept would be destroyed and not reported. But the incident, what we call inadvertent collection, would be recorded and reported. But that's a normal NSA procedure. It's been our procedure for the last quarter century. And as always, as we always do when dealing with U.S. person information, as I said earlier, U.S. identities are expunged when they're not essential to understanding the intelligence value of any report. Again, that's a normal NSA procedure.

So let me make this clear. When you're talking to your daughter at state college, this program cannot intercept your conversations. And when she takes a semester abroad to complete her Arabic studies, this program will not intercept your communications.

Let me emphasize one more thing that this program is not -- and, look, I know how hard it is to write a headline that's accurate and short and grabbing. But we really should shoot for all three -- accurate, short and grabbing. I don't think domestic spying makes it. One end of any call targeted under this program is always outside the United States. I've flown a lot in this country, and I've taken literally hundreds of domestic flights. I have never boarded a domestic flight in the United States of America and landed in Waziristan. In the same way -- and I'm speaking illustratively here now, this is just an example -- if NSA had intercepted al Qaeda Ops Chief Khalid Shaikh Mohammed in Karachi talking to Mohamed Atta in Laurel, Maryland, in say, July of 2001 -- if NSA had done that, and the results had been made public, I'm convinced that the crawler on all the 7 by 24 news networks would not have been "NSA domestic spying."

Had this program been in effect prior to 9/11, it is my professional judgment that we would have detected some of the 9/11 al Qaeda operatives in the United States, and we would have identified them as such.

I've said earlier that this program's been successful. Clearly not every lead pans out from this or any other source, but this program has given us information that we would not otherwise had been able to get. It's impossible for me to talk about this any more in a public way without alerting our enemies to our tactics or what we have learned. I can't give details without increasing the danger to Americans. On one level, believe me, I wish that I could. But I can't.

dalem · 01-25-2006, 01:57 AM

So Bulgy-

You're saying that leaking and publishing secure information related to our prosecution of the War on Terror, that many might suspect but have no proof of, in the pages of one of the most widely-distributed and read publications on the planet, is not something to get cranked up over?

If say, in July 1944, the NYT had published an article reviewing the elaborate deception plans of the Allies regarding the false landings at the Pas de Calais - an article that pretty much said "Yeah, Mr. Hitler, we know you know that we've been pushing in from Normandy for over a month now, and that all of your staff has realized that there never was a First Army Group under Patton to land at Calais, and that every second that you might still worry that there might be a landing there helps the Allied effort, but we're dying to tell you that really, that area is safe - go ahead and move the rest of 15th Army West" - that that would have been okay for someone on SHAEF to get the NYT, and for the NYT to print?

-dale

**Shek** · 01-25-2006, 09:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bulgaroctonus

I find it hard to believe that he never considered that phone calls and other communications between his group, Al-Qaeda, and Americans would be monitored. That is, I think the publication of the New York Times story did not 'tip off' Osama bin Laden to the U.S. surveillance.

Bin Laden has been aware for a long time that the U.S. monitored Al-Qaeda cellular conversations, that is why that group discontinued that practice. I think Mr. bin Laden easily imagined that all paths of communication were scrutinized.

First, it was satellite cmmunications that OBL was tipped off to through MSM reporting, and the intelligence community links it specifically to a Washington Times piece that was written a day prior to cruise missile attacks on his training camps using information provided by an administration official (yes, I'm aware that there was other MSM reporting; however, there has to be a reason that the intelligence community picks this specific report and not the others).

Second, OBL is not in operational control of AQ, and certainly not its affiliates, based on nearly all open source reporter. Therefore, addressing the problem through the lens of OBL is not a solid construct to examine this issue. You have to remember that there are all sorts of AQ operatives with varying levels of intelligence, experience (i.e. lessons learned). Just because one cell understands something about counter-surveillance techniques doesn't mean that other cells do too. You can't just send out a global email stating "don't do this or that." They operate in a cellular structure, meaning that disseminating information can be difficult. Posting to AQ sites can disseminate the information, but then you risk the chance of having Western intelligence agencies intercept this, allowing them to adapt their techniques. So, this is a much more complicated issue except for the simple fact that any new public domain reports will cause a severe reaction - in the NSA program's case, the NYT.

Lastly, the fact that the program has intercepted known AQ calls into the US indicates that AQ wasn't aware of this capability or didn't have the discipline to not conduct such communications. In other words, this program wouldn't exist if the foreign communications from AQ weren't made to the US.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bulgaroctonus

2.) Furthermore, the claim by the Bush administration that merely discussing the legality of the surveillance program aids Al-Qaeda is illogical. This is so simply because President Bush and his staff have repeatedly mentioned the program. After all, had not President Bush briefed Congress on the matter? If these briefings were public information, which they may not have been, then Al-Qaeda could have obtained information from there and the Bush Administration would be going against its own advice.

Therefore, even in the off chance that Al-Qaeda had no idea that it was being spied upon, I doubt that the New York Times article was the first place they found out about it.

I have found support of my opinion from Mr. Glenn Greenwald, a former New York City litigator. I advise all readers to examine his blog. It provides a powerful opinion backed up by legal and historical facts.

Thanks for the blog link. I read the entry you linked to, and I found it very unconvincing because Mr. Greenwald doesn't demonstrate any strong competence or understanding of the issue IMO. Here are my issues with the entry:

1. It is a strawman argument based on the examples he uses. He cites examples of the Patriot Act, a public domain law that has been debated in Congress for the past year or more as the sunset provisions approached. The NSA is (was) a secret executive order whose existence outside of the NSA, the top Congressmen, and some high ranking executive branch officials was unknown. Comparing the two is like comparing apples and oranges.

2. The damage to the effectiveness of the NSA program was done the day that the NYT printed the article, setting off a flurry of inaccurate speculation about the scope of the program. Such a revelation certainly has had a strong AQ reaction for many reasons:

*given the wide speculation of the program, the safe assumption for AQ is that all methods of communication are now suspect, causing a full review of their techniques, not just the ones that are specifically mentioned by the NYT - this is a reaction to the NYT article specifically, and any subsequent discussion about the program that doesn't reveal further details has a marginal impact on the effectiveness of the program, if at all

*not only are future communication techniques changed, but past potential compromises are examined to determine why a communication was intercepted, causing a focus on potential moles, which makes life much more difficult for Western intelligence agencies

3. The argument that the Bush Administration talking about the program is a clever yet disingenous argument. To not respond to the accusations and fallacies that have been speculated about would erode the effectiveness of the Administration. It is simply not possible to stand by and let the MSM and the Democrats hurl attacks that would diminish the ability to continue legal and constitutional surveillance programs that protect the US or to renew the amended Patriot Act to prevent lapses in the sunset provisions.

4. Because the briefings to Congressmen involved classified information, the information about those briefings isn't public domain information. In other words, it would require the appropriate security clearance and a need to know to read about the briefings. This is why Rockefeller and Pelosi had to have their "concerned" letters scrubbed to redact any classified information prior to releasing them last month.

**Shek** · 01-25-2006, 09:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Greenwald

There aren't very many things more likely to "harm national security" than using the term "national security" as a cynical political weapon used to depict political opponents as traitors and to intimidate others away from disclosing illegal conduct by the Government.

A few comments on Greenwald's closing comments:

1. He is trying to acclaim whistleblower status for the felons (TBD following the investigation and court hearing) that disclosed classified government information. There is a specific and legal process for challenging the NSA program if a person felt it was illegal - through the IG of your respective agency and through your Congressmen. Neither of these legal routes were taken; instead, classified information was divulged to a person without the proper clearance, and the information was published for the whole world to know.

2. I find the "national security" counterargument laughable. If Greenwald doesn't feel that the NSA program enhances national security, then he should be very direct by demanding that this program be terminated and never reinstated. I would challenge anybody to find a count of Congressmen that oppose the program in all forms, whether it is through an executive order or through a specific Congressional authorization.

Looking at this distinguishes those who are using the NSA program as a political issue (Bush is doing illegal activity according to us) from those who truly believe that the program is not an asset.

I guess you could have a second category of opposition, those who believe that the program is unconstitutional, which means even Congressional authorization would be invalid, although that would mean that when looking at the balancing test of the 4th Amendment, they believe the intrusion of privacy of those US persons who recieve communicaitons from AQ operatives is greater than the public interest that is served by intercepting these communications to prevent future 9/11s. However, I would find it hard to actually believe someone who states that is their opinion.

01-02-2006, 00:46 AM	#106 (permalink)
Shek *Military Professional* Moderator Join Date: 02-23-05 Location: Krblachistan Posts: 7,780 Country:	An interesting debate between two legal experts from the Federalist Society on the issue: http://www.fed-soc.org/pdf/domesticsurveillance.pdf __________________ "So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand." Thucydides 1.20.3

01-05-2006, 06:09 AM	#107 (permalink)
Mach Guest Posts: n/a	Its all a big game. All the top news teams with 3 big letters play mix and match with the acronym for Cental Intelligence. Has anyone really ever thought long and hard about how the word 'agency' got mixed up with 'central' in the middle of 'intelligence'? Get it? Its about as valid as the myth that the Internet is ex-military hardware when its not. Its consumer driven. So Bush merely has to act miffed and thats good enough. Who leaked this and who leaked that...blah blah blah..you did, you dumb ass! If only he knew how to play poker.....

01-09-2006, 10:17 AM	#108 (permalink)
Shek *Military Professional* Moderator Join Date: 02-23-05 Location: Krblachistan Posts: 7,780 Country:	Miami Herald January 8, 2006 56% Disapprove Of Secret Snooping In an AP-Ipsos poll, 56 percent of respondents said the U.S. government should be required to get a court warrant to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens. WASHINGTON - (AP) -- A majority of Americans want the Bush administration to get court approval before eavesdropping on people inside the United States, even if those calls might involve suspected terrorists, an AP-Ipsos poll shows. In the past three weeks, President Bush and top aides have defended the electronic monitoring program they secretly launched shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, as a vital tool to protect the nation from al Qaeda and its affiliates. Yet 56 percent of respondents in an AP-Ipsos poll said the government should be required to first get a court warrant to eavesdrop on the overseas calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens when those communications are believed to be tied to terrorism. 'We're at war' Agreeing with the White House, about 42 percent do not believe the court approval is necessary. ''We're at war,'' Bush said during a New Year's Day visit to San Antonio. ``And as commander in chief, I've got to use the resources at my disposal, within the law, to protect the American people. . . . It's a vital, necessary program.'' According to the poll, age matters in how people view the monitoring. Nearly two-thirds of those between age 18 to 29 believe warrants should be required, while people 65 and older are evenly divided. Party affiliation is a factor, too. Almost three-fourths of Democrats and one-third of Republicans want to require court warrants. Cynthia Ice-Bones, 32, a Republican from Sacramento, said knowing about the program made her feel a bit safer. ''I think our security is so important that we don't need warrants. If you're doing something we shouldn't be doing, then you ought to be caught,'' she said. But Peter Ahr of Caldwell, N.J., a religious studies professor at Seton Hall University, said he could not find a justification for skipping judicial approvals. Nor did he believe the administration's argument that such a step would impair terrorism investigations. 'Live by the law' ''We're a nation of laws. . . . That means that everybody has to live by the law, including the administration,'' said Ahr, 64, a Democrat who argues for checks and balances. ``For the administration to simply go after wiretaps on their own without anyone else's say-so is a violation of that principle.'' The eavesdropping is run by the secretive National Security Agency, the government's code-makers and code-breakers. Charles Franklin, a political science professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said most people think the eavesdropping is aimed at foreign terrorists, even when the surveillance is conducted inside the country. ''They are willing to give the president quite a lot of leeway on this when it comes to the war on terror,'' said Franklin, who closely follows public opinion. Some members of Congress have raised concerns about the president's actions, but none of those lawmakers who have been briefed on the program has called for its immediate halt.

01-19-2006, 18:44 PM	#109 (permalink)
Shek *Military Professional* Moderator Join Date: 02-23-05 Location: Krblachistan Posts: 7,780 Country:	My guess is that OBL just validated the NSA program. Whatever chance there was to stop it is now gone.

01-20-2006, 09:48 AM	#112 (permalink)
Shek *Military Professional* Moderator Join Date: 02-23-05 Location: Krblachistan Posts: 7,780 Country:	Looks like the NSA story will be hitting the airwaves again with Congressional hearings coming up. I guess the Democrats are going to be holding partisan hearings today, and bipartisan hearings in the Judicial Committee of the Senate will be held soon. So, here are some primary source documents and some commentary/articles on them. The reports are from the Congressional Research Service, "a 'think tank' that provides reports to members of Congress on a variety of topics relevant to current political events." Statutory Procedures Under Which Congress Is To Be Informed of U.S. Intelligence Activities, Including Covert Actions, January 18, 2006 Administration Paper Defends Spy Program: Detailed Argument Cites War Powers Presidential Authority to Conduct Warrantless Electronic Surveillance to Gather Foreign Intelligence Information Report Rebuts Bush on Spying: Domestic Action's Legality Challenged They'll Be OK if No One Reads the Report

01-20-2006, 11:51 AM	#113 (permalink)
Dreadnought *Senior Contributor* Join Date: 05-12-05 Posts: 5,506 Country:	IMO Nobody wants big brother spying on them and their lives. On the other hand most people really dont have anything to hide. Its a double edged sword. If it keeps my country and its citizens safe then im willing to go along with it. We can only hope it will be used to protect America and not used for political career killing among adversaries.

01-25-2006, 01:57 AM	#118 (permalink)
dalem Lord High Hullabalooster *Senior Contributor* Join Date: 11-23-04 Location: Columbia Heights, MN Posts: 8,518 Country:	So Bulgy- You're saying that leaking and publishing secure information related to our prosecution of the War on Terror, that many might suspect but have no proof of, in the pages of one of the most widely-distributed and read publications on the planet, is not something to get cranked up over? If say, in July 1944, the NYT had published an article reviewing the elaborate deception plans of the Allies regarding the false landings at the Pas de Calais - an article that pretty much said "Yeah, Mr. Hitler, we know you know that we've been pushing in from Normandy for over a month now, and that all of your staff has realized that there never was a First Army Group under Patton to land at Calais, and that every second that you might still worry that there might be a landing there helps the Allied effort, but we're dying to tell you that really, that area is safe - go ahead and move the rest of 15th Army West" - that that would have been okay for someone on SHAEF to get the NYT, and for the NYT to print? -dale