Dick Cheney was at his best shilling for immunity for telecom companies today before the Heritage Foundation. His speech came one day before the Republican rubber stamp machine in the Senate attempts another push to give blanket immunity to the telecommunication companies suspected of engaging in illegal eavesdropping and surveillance of Americans. Although wiretapping is usually justified as a necessary tool in the "War on Terror", there is good reason to doubt the official story and question the legality of the Bush administration's practices.
Already a series of Bush administration lies on the subject has collapsed. First, there was President Bush's repeated public statements back in 2004 that wiretapping occurs in the United States only pursuant to court order. NY Times writers who had found out otherwise were threatened and cajoled into silence for an entire year. When the government's massive warrantless surveillance program was finally exposed in 2005, we were told the "terrorist surveillance program" had been instituted in response to the 9-11 attacks and the threat of terrorism. But a number of credible sources have since reported that the NSA's domestic phone record program began 7 months before 9/11.
The Administration argues that the telecom companies deserve immunity because their managers were loyal Americans acting in the public interest and they could not have been expected to determine the legality of their actions. Hefty financial incentives in the form of government contracts may have been dangled in front of the telecoms to get them to overlook the legalities. This argument fails, nonetheless, because of evidence in the form of heavily redacted court documents describing Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio's refusal in February 2001 to turn over call records to the NSA without a proper legal order. (Nacchio contends that he was targeted by the Administration for a criminal investigation precisely because he refused to play ball without a court order.)
Obtaining the truth about the NSA's surveillance program is of the utmost importance. Congress is in the process of fashioning a legislative fix that is supposed to accomplish the dual goals of detecting terrorists without unduly invading privacy interests and without clogging up the NSA's databases with non-relevant data about innocent Americans.
Without the facts about the scope of monitoring, what actual prior limitations or technological challenges existed and exactly what kinds of surveillance services or customer records the telecoms were providing the NSA, it's hard to know what, if any, legislative remedy is needed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). It is quite obvious, however, from various congresspersons' public statements after the midnight vote in August 2007 (before their summer recess) that few understood what they had voted for. So there's strong reason to believe that Congress itself has still not been told the truth. What Congress and the public have been told is that dramatic changes to FISA are necessary to expand warrantless monitoring of all international calls including of Americans' calls abroad.
Immunizing the telecoms' prior illegal actions in a blanket way not only sets a terrible precedent that the Constitution and the courts don't matter on the mere say-so of the executive branch, but the continued murkiness potentially covers up all kinds of other problems. Remember the FBI's rush to collect banking, credit, telephone, travel and all manner of other information about you with their hundreds of thousands of "national security letters" after 9-11? More is not necessarily better if mistakes and non-relevance are pervasive in such collection, as the Department of Justice's own Inspector General later found.
There are similar utilitarian concerns with the NSA's massive data collection and data-sorting system as those regarding the effectiveness of "no fly lists" that have quickly grown to contain tens of thousands of ordinary persons' names like "Gary Smith". Sources have reported the NSA's surveillance system, enabled by secret contracts between private telecommunication companies and the government, collecting various communications of Americans without individualized probable cause, has already produced a database clogged with corrupted and useless information. The same sources say that privacy protection would have helped inject some judiciousness into analysis and investigations to better separate the innocent from the guilty.
Moreover, there is reportedly no way to even monitor for abuses under the current system. While privacy regulations normally protect all sensitive information about American citizens, such as an IRS return or an FBI file, the program that Bush seeks to immunize apparently provides no way to track abuse by someone in the NSA or Executive Branch. This concern is no small matter considering the history of a rogue FBI agent like Russian spy Robert Hanssen or a criminal staffer like Scooter Libby.
The last time the country was scared into such civil rights abuses, in the 1960s, a high level FBI official ended up testifying to the Church Committee that no one in the FBI had questioned if the COINTELPRO domestic surveillance program was legal, moral or ethical. Fear has a history of inducing such mistakes. The Church Committee eventually unraveled many of the abuses of that era in an open process that stands as a model in ferreting out truth and fixing the problems. That's how we got the FISA law to begin with--it was a compromise to enable monitoring in individual cases for purposes of national security while simultaneously preventing abuse of Americans' privacy rights.
It appears the Bush Administration's push to provide blanket immunity for telecoms is on a par with the C.I.A.'s destruction of videotaped harsh interrogations in the midst of ongoing legal inquiries, the millions of White House e-mail records missing in violation of the Presidential Records Act and Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's prison sentence. In the Bush administration, protection of the guilty from accountability under the Constitution requires suppressing the truth. But if Congress allows it to happen, the suppression of the truth will come at a high cost to the integrity of the Constitution, to Americans' civil liberties and potentially also to the national security of the United States.
Co-authored by Tom Maertens, former Deputy Coordinator for Counter-terrorism, Department of State and National Security Council Director for Non-Proliferation
A series of administration lies on this subject has collapsed. First, there were President Bush's statements in 2004 “wiretapping occurs in the United States only pursuant to court order.” NY Times writers who had found out otherwise were threatened into silence. In 2005, when the government's massive warrantless surveillance program was exposed, the President said "terrorist surveillance program” began in response to the 9/11 attacks and the threat of terrorism. Yet credible sources have reported that the NSA's domestic phone record program began in February,, 2001, not in the aftermath of 9/11, (almost immediately after this administration took office).
The telecom firms were cajoled and bribed (lucrative deals) into betraying their privacy agreements with customers, violating the law, and our Constitution, outweighing misguided patriotism, as evidenced by the fact some telecoms terminated wiretapping when the government contracts expired, and the companies were no longer being paid for this service.
The administration’s insistence on immunity for telecom companies serves only to keep their silence and to protect those guilty from accountability. Without criminal or civil litigation pending, those involved do not need to testify; they can destroy or hide documents (NSA-executive orders); and can suppress evidence which might expose potential abuses of power.
The President’s refusal to sign anti-terrorist legislation or a FISA bill that provides for our nation’s security (without telecom immunity) indicates HE is willing to sacrifice our vital national security interests, and the safety of Americans for the sake of the telecoms, continued secrecy and deception.
10:40pm
Alexandria, VA
Coleen, I was babysitting my grandson all day today and trying to check my e-mail. I could not get into msfisk@mail.com for hours. For unknown reasons I would get a screen that said "TRY LATER, blah blah blah." Now, when I finally got into it this evening, I have a message from Congressman Peter Welch of Vermont thanking me for my kind words, blah blah.
Problem is, I never sent him any "kind words." I moved out of Vermont at the end of November because of mail theft, ID theft, etc., etc. I wonder who sent the COngressman an e-mail using my e-mail account.
Believe me when I tell you, SURVEILLANCE is not a problem for me. If there was ONLY SURVEILLANCE, I wouldn't be having all of these ID theft problems.
Stolen ID is a problem. Stolen evidence for my legal case is a problem. Intercepted calls and e-mail is a problem. Impersonators are a problem.
Surveillance is annoying, but I am not even complaining about surveillance.
SHIRLEY ANN FISK
Of course the Church Committee did not begin its work of unraveling the abuses that occurred in the 60's until about 1976 when Hoover was safely dead and Nixon was out. This illustrates how powerful a tool secrecy is--the old adage "Secrecy promotes tyranny". Under the criminal Title III law which allows legal wiretapping pursuant to individualized probable cause and judicial court order, only TEMPORARY SECRECY is provided, only while the investigation is ongoing. There's no reason that temporary secrecy as opposed to perpetual secrecy wouldn't work with terrorists just as it does with the Mafia. A form of oversight would be built this way right into the process.
Her underling asked, "How do you feel about Sen. Feinsteins proposed amendment, giving immunity to the telephone company only after the FISA court has reviewed on a case by case basis." I replied, "Absolutly not, if the FISA court doesn't find any improper action, the telecom companies won't need immunity, and if the FISA court finds improper actions, I want the telecom companies to be prosecuted! No immunity period. If they've done nothing wrong, why are they asking for it? And if they've something wrong, they don't deserve it..."
I'm furious. And I'm calling.
If anyone wants to call their Senator, here are links to the phone numbers of the Senators on the Intelligence Committee, Judiciary Committee, and our feckless leader, Harry Reid:
Harry Reid - 202-224-3542
Intelligence Committee:
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/cgi-bin/newcommittee.cgi?site=ctc&lang=&commcode=sintelligence
Judiciary Committee:
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/cgi-bin/newcommittee.cgi?site=ctc&lang=&commcode=sjudiciary
It would be a great test of the candidates' commitment to the people of the US and the rule of law and their pledges to protect and defend the Constitution, if they each were to return to the floor and fight along with Sen. Dodd and others who have promised to filibuster any bill containing immunity. If they do not stand against telecom immunity, we will know where they really stand on defending the Constitution. I will not support ANY candidate who will not fight for the Constitution.
It is this:
It was not until the son was IN THE pig sty, EATING THE pig food, that the son realized his birthright was to be a privileged man and not a beggar.
We, as a nation and to-a-man, are now living with the consequences of lawlessness, and some of the lawbreakers have the ability to pass laws. All of them have the ability to authorize both the coining and the spending of money.
Their strategy has been and continues to be quite simple: split the country, divide it against itself, light fires everywhere so they're constantly fighting fires and not paying attention to you. Then loot the place... drain it dry.
"Political parties" are nothing more than brand-names and points of division. The entire, much-too-long "political campaign" is simply a decoy to keep your attention focused on "a coming savior in November of 2008" instead of demanding change right now.
The one thing they fear ... the one thing that will send them fleeing for a place having no extradition treaty ... is "United We Stand."
"What would Patrick Henry do?"
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
Those who want to claim the U.S. is really a one party state have a lot of evidence in this issue to back them up. At least China is honest and open about it.
Because the Democrats and Republicans are wholly owned and bought subsidiaries of corruption! They are two extreme wings of the same party! Get it through your heads, voters.
Sure, the Democrats and Republicans, "The Party", have different ways of going about it. Different policies. In the end, they are bought and paid for by the same special interests. You do not see it do you? I laugh when I hear that Democrats will bring change.
Like the Clintons who gave us NAFTA. Which party is now receiving the most corporate contributions? The Democrats. I wonder why?
And what do you do as Americans? Support "The Party" and install their candidates, and wonder why nothing is done. That is our failure. Mine, yours, every voter's failure.
Time for a change, don't you think? Time for us to wake up from our collective blindness and take responsibility. The Democrats and Republicans have failed. They have brought us to this crisis. And you, as a voter, are the reason why.
When they ask for secrecy, it is to cover up their own incompetence and criminality.
There is a real danger to our national security. It is having the Bush Administration preside over a "Global War on Terror.'
Once again thank you and Tom Maertens for you wonderful efforts in bringing us this eloquent report. Kudos to both! Agape.