Fear and False Claims

Playing the terrorism card, a GOP-linked group twists facts about a controversial electronic surveillance bill

By Viveca Novak, factcheck.org via Newsweek

A widely-seen ad pushes a White House-backed bill that would make it easier for the government to wiretap Americans. It also would give retroactive legal immunity to telecom companies that cooperated with Bush's secret, post-9/11 warrantless wiretapping program.

Sponsored by Defense of Democracies, a group with GOP connections, the ad takes the House to task for not passing the bill, as the Senate has. The ad appeals to fear, with its image of Osama bin Laden and similar ploys. But we find that it also makes several misleading claims.

Specifically, the ad says that:

• "The law" allowing government eavesdroppers to intercept al Qaeda communications has expired. But the main, 30-year-old law that lets them listen in, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, is still on the books. It's a law amending FISA, making it easier for intelligence-gatherers to eavesdrop on communications that might include Americans, that has expired.
• "[T]he House refuses to vote" to replace the lapsed law. Actually, the House passed its own version of the legislation months ago. The House and Senate are now in conference to resolve the differences in their bills, which is the normal legislative process.
• "[N]ew surveillance against terrorists is crippled." The administration has admitted that surveillance authorized under the expired bill will extend at least into August. It has also admitted that when a new member of a known terrorist organization is discovered, that person can be surveilled via authorizations granted under the expired law. And at any rate, FISA itself hasn't expired, and any time the government has strong evidence that someone is a member of a terrorist organization, it can still get a court order to eavesdrop on that person.

(More here.)

McConnell/Mukasey: Eavesdropping outside of FISA is "illegal"

Glenn Greenwald
Salon.com

The White House yesterday escalated its most brazen, Orwellian campaign of the last eight years -- shrilly accusing House Democrats of jeopardizing the nation's security by allowing the Protect America Act to expire even though it's the President and House Republicans who blocked any extensions of that law. As the Associated Press pointed out at the bottom of its story:

McConnell acknowledged last week that the White House's refusal to extend the wiretapping law was meant to pressure Congress to pass the Senate bill.

Ponder what it says about our press corps that the White House knows it can (a) block all attempts to extend the PAA and then (b) spend the next several weeks blaming Democrats for helping the Terrorists by allowing the PAA to expire. I know I've made that point before, but this one is so brazen, so transparent and audacious, that it just hasn't yet ceased to amaze.

In any event, the two honorable, apolitical, completely trustworthy Bush cabinet members -- DNI Mike McConnell and Attorney General Michael Mukasey -- yesterday released a letter addressed to House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes which is basically a written adaptation of the scary 24 video produced this week by the House Republicans, breathlessly claiming that the nation "is now more vulnerable to terrorist attack and other foreign threats" because of the PAA's expiration.

(Continued here.)

Bush assault on Bill of Rights continues...take action now

by TM

The Senate may vote today on a bill that would grant retroactive immunity to telecom companies that helped the Bush administration spy on the American people without warrants.

Harry Reid, after infamously bringing up the Intelligence Committee's version of the bill (instead of the Judiciary Cmte's bill, which excluded immunity), now realizes he was snookered by the Republicans who have no intention of compromising when it comes to rubber-stamping Bush's assault of the Constitution.

Reid has vowed now to filibuster the bill granting immunity. Hillary and Obama are returning to Washington to join the filibuster.

Call your Senators now (numbers here) and tell them to support the filibuster, that you oppose any bill which grants retroactive immunity to telecoms that spied on the American people without warrants.

Sen. Dodd had this to say about the abuse of secrecy by Bush and Cheney:

Yes, secrecy is necessary, at times, in the life of every nation. But it’s a bedrock principle that democracies should always err on the side of less secrecy. For that reason, I believe that cases against the telecoms are best handled in our standard federal courts-which, by the way, have shown time and time again that they know how to protect state secrets...

It took three decades, three branches of government, four presidents, and 12 Congresses to patiently, painstakingly build up (the FISA) machinery. It only took one president to tear it down. Generations of leaders handed over to President Bush a system that brought security under the law, a system primed to bless nearly any eavesdropping he could conceive.

And he responded: "No thank you. I’d rather break the law."

He ignored not just a federal court, but a secret federal court; not just a secret federal court, but a secret federal court prepared to sign off on his actions ninety nine point nine percent of the time. And he still hasn’t given us a good reason why. He still hasn’t shown how his lawbreaking makes us safer.

So I am left to conclude that, to the president, this isn’t about security. It’s about power: power in itself, power for itself.

I make that point not to change the subject, but because I believe it solves a mystery. That is: Why is retroactive immunity so vital to this president? The answer, I believe, is that immunity means secrecy; and secrecy, to this administration, means power...

And we find proof in their original version of retroactive immunity: a proposal to protect not just the telecoms, but everyone involved in the wiretapping program.

In their original proposal, that is, they wanted to immunize themselves.

Think about that. It speaks to their fear and, perhaps, their guilt: their guilt that they had broken the law, and their fear that in the years to come, they would be found liable or convicted. They knew better than anyone else what they had done—they must have had good reason to be afraid! ...

The only thing that stands to be exposed if these cases go to trial is the extent of President Bush’s lawbreaking. That, he will keep from the light of a courtroom at all costs.

This is a self-preservation bill. And given the lack of compelling alternatives, I can only conclude that self-preservation—secrecy for secrecy’s sake—explains the president’s vehemence.

Well, you might say, he’ll be gone in a year—why not let the secrets die with this presidency and start afresh?

Because those secrets never rightfully belonged to him. They belong to history, to our successors in this chamber, to every one of us. Thirty years after the Church Committee, history repeated itself. If those who come after us are to prevent it from repeating again, they need the full truth.

And we need to set an unmistakable precedent: that determining guilt or innocence belongs to the courts, not to Congress or the president; that lawless spying will no longer be tolerated; and that, most of all, the truth is no one’s private property.

FISA Bill: Clinton and Obama to Vote “No” on Cloture

from Firedoglake

BREAKING: Hillary Clinton To Vote “No” On Cloture Tomorrow
UPDATE: Barack Obama Will Be There Too

By: Jane Hamsher Sunday January 27, 2008 7:12 pm

According to the Clinton campaign, Hillary Clinton will be in the Senate tomorrow to vote "no" on cloture on the Intel version of the FISA bill. The vote is scheduled to take place at 4:30 pm Monday.

I've also been trying to confirm whether Barack Obama will be there. His campaign people have not gotten back to me, but Obama does have a 4pm fundraiser scheduled in Washington DC.

Bravo, Senator Clinton. Well done.

UPDATE: The Obama campaign confirms that Senator Obama will be there too, and voting "no." Way to go, Senator.

Looks like we're gonna have quite a CSPAN liveblog party tomorrow.

Dick Cheney's top aide: "We're one bomb away" from killing FISA

Glenn Greenwald
from Salon.com

In October of 2003, Jack Goldsmith -- a right-wing lawyer with radical views of executive power and long-time friend of John Yoo -- was named by the Bush administration to head the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel, one of the most influential legal positions in the executive branch. During his tenure, he discovered numerous legal positions which the administration had adopted (many created by Yoo) that he found baseless and even unconscionable -- from torture to detention powers to illegal surveillance -- and he repudiated many of them, thereby repeatedly infuriating the most powerful White House officials, led by Cheney top aide David Addington. As a result, his tenure was extremely brief, and he was gone a mere 9 months after he began.

Goldsmith, now a Harvard Law Professor, has just written a book, to be released this month, criticizing and, in some cases, exposing for the first time, many of Bush's executive power abuses. He is donating all the proceeds from the book to charity to prevent the standard integrity attacks which Bush followers launch at any ex-officials who commit such blasphemy. In a lengthy profile in The New York Times Magazine, Jeffrey Rosen profiles Goldsmith and highlights some of the book's key revelations.

Two revelations in particular are extraordinary and deserve (but are unlikely to receive) intense media coverage. First, it was Goldsmith who first argued that the administration's secret, warrantless surveillance programs were illegal, and it was that conclusion which sparked the now famous refusal of Ashcroft/Comey in early 2004 to certify the program's legality. Goldsmith argued continuously about his conclusion with Addington, and during the course of those arguments, this is what happened:

[Goldsmith] shared the White House's concern that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act might prevent wiretaps on international calls involving terrorists. But Goldsmith deplored the way the White House tried to fix the problem, which was highly contemptuous of Congress and the courts. "We're one bomb away from getting rid of that obnoxious [FISA] court," Goldsmith recalls Addington telling him in February 2004.

Their goal all along was to "get rid of the obnoxious FISA court" entirely, so that they could freely eavesdrop on whomever they wanted with no warrants or oversight of any kind. And here is Dick Cheney's top aide, drooling with anticipation at the prospect of another terrorist attack so that they could seize this power without challenge. Addington views the Next Terrorist Attack as the golden opportunity to seize yet more power. Sitting around the White House dreaming of all the great new powers they will have once the new terrorist attack occurs -- as Addington was doing -- is nothing short of deranged.

(Continued here.)

Tim Walz clarifies vote on FISA

Wiretapping law is imperfect but necessary

by Tim Walz, from the Rochester Post-Bulletin

On Saturday, Aug. 4, I cast one of the most difficult votes of my tenure in Congress, supporting legislation that makes temporary changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA).

Almost three decades ago, the original law set up a special FISA court to review Executive Branch requests to conduct surveillance on targets within the United States. It wasn't charged with monitoring surveillance of foreign targets. FISA attempted -- sometimes unsuccessfully -- to strike a delicate balance, protecting Americans' civil liberties while allowing intelligence officials to gather information.

The basic tension between security and civil liberties has been constant over the past 29 years, but the threats have evolved and changed during that time, and so has the technology involved in the interception of this information. By tradition, the FISA court reviews all communications that physically move through U.S. infrastructure. But today, much of the communication taking place in the world travels through fiber optic communication channels that exist in the United States -- even when the parties communicating are outside our country.

(The rest is here.)

Walz receiving flack for supporting Bush on FISA

Tongues are wagging and keyboards are pounding on the left side of the blogosphere questioning Rep. Tim Walz's "yea" vote on the Protect America Act of 2007, which more or less legalizes all the illegal electronic surveillance stuff that's been going on since 9/11. (It's a little more complicated than that.)

The blogosphere is one thing, but now the heretofore solidly conservative Rochester Post-Bulletin minces no words in calling Walz to task for his vote.

To see the Post-Bulletin chastising a Democrat for supporting the president signals one of two things. Either the Post-Bulletin has taken a decidedly leftward tack in its editorial policy, or Walz actually did make the wrong decision. If you want to read the editorial, go here.