Man, is the NY TImes in jail yet? This probe is totally devestating them. I was going to sign up for TimesSelect but don't want to get raped in prison.
Oh, Myoptic One, please enlighten us with your *interpretation* of the events, leaving out all inconvenient facts as you go. The story got published when it did, since one of the NYT writers just published a book covering the NSA spying story. Since the NYT sat on the story and did not publish it during the 2004 election campaign, one can concluded that the NYT is a GOP pawn. What other can be the case? BTW TJ, great post. One of your best to date. I have not laughed so hard in a long time.
OTOH the Bush Admin could a pull a OBL, wait until something bad happened, and then look into it. HOW FLAWED.
TJ wouldn't it have been better for the administration (certainly they would be able to claim the high ground) if they would have come out and said something to the effect that "we've been informed about a leak to the Times in regards to a story on national security and we have launched an investigation into who leaked this information and possibly compromised national security." Instead of waiting a year before trying to silence a critic after the article finally came out?
Your understanding of National Security laws and how information is classified and handled is laughable. The NYTimes is not a government employee, they had no "need to know," and they are not usually (unless you're sleeping with Scooter) privy to classified information. When the administration learned about the story a year before publishing, they had to know there was a "leak" because the NYTimes had the information. It doesn't get any more obvious. Therefore, they should have initiated an investigation immediately to protect this "critical" program and find the ne'er-do-well who leaked the info. That they waitied until the story was published shows that the investigation is a PR ploy in response to the bad publicity this story created. Or that they are incompetent. Take your pick.
In other words, there's no distinction between "the public" and the NYtimes in the laws that govern classified info. They are one and the same.
But the severity of the crime increases dramatically when the information is published in the NYT and the anti-terror operations are grounded. Obviously you know that, but are purposefully ignoring it. Launching a probe into the leak to the NYT reporter obviously brings attention to the the leak, and increases the chances of the leaked information going public. The Bush Administration was attempting to avoid this by discouraging the Times from publishing mission critical information regarding spying on al Qaeda. The NYT ignored the nation's best interest, in favor of their partisan interests, and published the report. It's that simple, libs.
Are you referring to the crime the president committed in engaging in illegal spying? I don't believe that the severity of the President's criminal transgressions is increased by publication of it, but if you have contrary information I'll look at it.
Sam, I've already whipped you once in this debate -- the wiretapping of al Qaeda - to US citizens phone calls was Constitutionally protected. Granting clause. Look it up.
So wait, you're saying that the severity of the Presidents crimes IS or IS NOT increased by the NYT's publication of the information about it. be more clear, please!
HO HO HO! A nice try indeed Sam, of dodging your inaccuracy and failed past attempts at taking a run at me. As you grasp for another angle to attack -- one which may yield better results than your last few faceplants, I'd like to remind you that the President did not commit any crimes AND I'd like to add that the NYT's publication of the legal wiretapping was a severe victory for the terrorists. It made their actions safer. Sam, do you believe that the NYT publishing techniques in which the US spies on al Qaeda was good for the War on Terror? Is helping the terrorists something you vehemently support? Should all of the US military strategy's in the war be on Page 1 of the NYT? Should the NYT wait a year to publish a story to maximize it's political impact and advance their partisan causes? Lots of questions for you to answer Sam. You were once a lawyer, maybe you can scrounge something up for a rebuttal. Besos, Jorge
Again, your understanding is simplistic. The law makes no difference between the NYTimes and everyone else when info is "leaked." A crime is a crime... it makes no difference if I murder one person or 10 and it makes no difference if classified information is in the hands of 1 reporter or everyone who reads a newspaper. Furthermore, without an immediate investigation, how could the administration know that the "leaker" would not go to some other outlet that wouldn't be as cooperative as the NYTimes? How could they know the leaker wouldn't call up Osama? If the position of the administration and its defenders is that this leak is a big blow to anti-terrorism efforts, why wait to investigate? And by the way, if the NYTimes is sitting on the story, you don't have to make a public announcement that you are looking for someone who illegally released classified info... you do it in-house and under the radar giving you all the better chance to catch the miscreant. They waited because they knew that the "leaker" was really a whistleblower dropping the dime on illegal activities and they were hoping the story would never come out.
You testify and you or someone you love might have an "accident." ---------------- Ex-official warned against testifying on NSA programs By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIME The National Security Agency has warned a former intelligence officer that he should not testify to Congress about accusations of illegal activity at NSA because of the secrecy of the programs involved. Renee Seymour, director of NSA special access programs stated in a Jan. 9 letter to Russ Tice that he should not testify about secret electronic intelligence programs because members and staff of the House and Senate intelligence committees do not have the proper security clearances for the secret intelligence. Miss Seymour stated that Mr. Tice has "every right" to speak to Congress and that NSA has "no intent to infringe your rights." However, she stated that the programs Mr. Tice took part in were so secret that "neither the staff nor the members of the [House intelligence committee] or [Senate intelligence committee] are cleared to receive the information covered by the special access programs, or SAPs." "The SAPs to which you refer are controlled by the Department of Defense (DoD) and ... neither the staffs nor the members ... are cleared to receive the intelligence covered by the SAPs," Miss Seymour stated. Special access programs are the most sensitive U.S. intelligence and weapons programs and are exempt from many oversight mechanisms used to check other intelligence agencies. Miss Seymour also said that Mr. Tice, who was dismissed in May, failed to notify either the Pentagon or NSA of the improper behavior that he is charging. As a result, she stated that Mr. Tice must first give statements to the Defense Department and NSA inspectors general before he provides any classified information to Congress from the SAPs. Miss Seymour also said Mr. Tice must first "obtain and follow direction" from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, through the inspectors general on the proper procedures for contacting the congressional oversight committees. Mr. Tice said he was not part of the classified NSA program disclosed by the New York Times last month that intercepted telephone, e-mail and other communications involving U.S. citizens without a warrant from a special court. However, he told ABC News on Tuesday that he was a source for the New York Times. "As far as I'm concerned, as long as I don't say anything that's classified, I'm not worried," he said. "We need to clean up the intelligence community. We've had abuses, and they need to be addressed." Mr. Tice last month asked to testify to the House and Senate intelligence oversight panels regarding what he called "probable unlawful and unconstitutional acts" that occurred while he was a technical intelligence specialist with NSA and the Defense Intelligence Agency. He provided no details of the programs. However, Mr. Tice worked on special access programs related to electronic intelligence gathering while working for the NSA and DIA, where he took part in space systems communications, non-communications signals, electronic warfare, satellite control, telemetry, sensors, and special capability systems. http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20060111-112622-2876r.htm
Well this is telling. All the Bush defenders are reduced to saying: "You must be a terrorist supporter if your criticize". Idiots.
Bush Authorized Domestic Spying Before 9/11 By Jason Leopold t r u t h o u t | Perspective Friday 13 January 2006 The National Security Agency advised President Bush in early 2001 that it had been eavesdropping on Americans during the course of its work monitoring suspected terrorists and foreigners believed to have ties to terrorist groups, according to a declassified document. http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB24/nsa25.pdf The NSA's vast data-mining activities began shortly after Bush was sworn in as president and the document contradicts his assertion that the 9/11 attacks prompted him to take the unprecedented step of signing a secret executive order authorizing the NSA to monitor a select number of American citizens thought to have ties to terrorist groups. In its "Transition 2001" report, the NSA said that the ever-changing world of global communication means that "American communication and targeted adversary communication will coexist." "Make no mistake, NSA can and will perform its missions consistent with the Fourth Amendment and all applicable laws," the document says. However, it adds that "senior leadership must understand that the NSA's mission will demand a 'powerful, permanent presence' on global telecommunications networks that host both 'protected' communications of Americans and the communications of adversaries the agency wants to target." What had long been understood to be protocol in the event that the NSA spied on average Americans was that the agency would black out the identities of those individuals or immediately destroy the information. But according to people who worked at the NSA as encryption specialists during this time, that's not what happened. On orders from Defense Department officials and President Bush, the agency kept a running list of the names of Americans in its system and made it readily available to a number of senior officials in the Bush administration, these sources said, which in essence meant the NSA was conducting a covert domestic surveillance operation in violation of the law. James Risen, author of the book State of War and credited with first breaking the story about the NSA's domestic surveillance operations, said President Bush personally authorized a change in the agency's long-standing policies shortly after he was sworn in in 2001. "The president personally and directly authorized new operations, like the NSA's domestic surveillance program, that almost certainly would never have been approved under normal circumstances and that raised serious legal or political questions," Risen wrote in the book. "Because of the fevered climate created throughout the government by the president and his senior advisers, Bush sent signals of what he wanted done, without explicit presidential orders" and "the most ambitious got the message." The NSA's domestic surveillance activities that began in early 2001 reached a boiling point shortly after 9/11, when senior administration officials and top intelligence officials asked the NSA to share that data with other intelligence officials who worked for the FBI and the CIA to hunt down terrorists that might be in the United States. However the NSA, on advice from its lawyers, destroyed the records, fearing the agency could be subjected to lawsuits by American citizens identified in the agency's raw intelligence reports. The declassified report says that the "Director of the National Security Agency is obligated by law to keep Congress fully and currently formed of intelligence activities." But that didn't happen. When news of the NSA's clandestine domestic spying operation, which President Bush said he had authorized in 2002, was uncovered last month by the New York Times, Democratic and Republican members of Congress appeared outraged, claiming that they were never informed of the covert surveillance operation. It's unclear whether the executive order signed by Bush removes the NSA Director from his duty to brief members of Congress about the agency's intelligence gathering programs. Eavesdropping on Americans required intelligence officials to obtain a surveillance warrant from a special court and show probable cause that the person they wanted to monitor was communicating with suspected terrorists overseas. But Bush said that the process for obtaining such warrants under the 1978 Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act was, at times, "cumbersome." In a December 22, letter to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Assistant Attorney General William E. Moschella wrote that the "President determined it was necessary following September 11 to create an early warning detection system. FISA could not have provided the speed and agility required for the early warning detection system." However, what remains murky about that line of reasoning is that after 9/11, former Attorney General John Ashcroft undertook a full-fledged lobbying campaign to loosen the rules and the laws governing FISA to make it easier for the intelligence community to obtain warrants for wiretaps to spy on Americans who might have ties to terrorists. Since the legislative change, more than 4,000 surveillance warrants have been approved by the FISA court, leading many to wonder why Bush selectively chose to bypass the court for what he said were a select number of individuals. More than a dozen legal scholars dispute Moschella's legal analysis, saying in a letter just sent to Congress that the White House failed to identify "any plausible legal authority for such surveillance." "The program appears on its face to violate existing law," wrote the scholars of constitutional law, some of whom worked in various senior capacities in Republican and Democratic administrations, in an extraordinary letter to Congress that laid out, point by point, why the president is unauthorized to permit the NSA to spy on Americans and how he broke the law by approving it. "Even conceding that the President in his role as Commander in Chief may generally collect 'signals intelligence' on the enemy abroad, Congress indisputably has authority to regulate electronic surveillance within the United States, as it has done in FISA," the letter states. "Where Congress has so regulated, the President can act in contravention of statute only if his authority is exclusive, that is, not subject to the check of statutory regulation. The DOJ letter pointedly does not make that extraordinary claim. The Supreme Court has never upheld warrantless wiretapping within the United States." Additionally, "if the administration felt that FISA was insufficient, the proper course was to seek legislative amendment, as it did with other aspects of FISA in the Patriot Act, and as Congress expressly contemplated when it enacted the wartime wiretap provision in FISA," the letter continues. "One of the crucial features of a constitutional democracy is that it is always open to the President - or anyone else - to seek to change the law. But it is also beyond dispute that, in such a democracy, the President cannot simply violate criminal laws behind closed doors because he deems them obsolete or impracticable." Jeffrey Smith, the former General Counsel for the CIA under the Clinton administration, also weighed in on the controversy Wednesday. Smith said he wants to testify at hearings that Bush overstepped his authority and broke the law. His own legal opinion on the spy program was included in a 14-page letter to the House Select Committee on Intelligence that said that President Bush does not have the legal authority to order the NSA to spy on American citizens, aides to Congressman John Conyers said Wednesday evening. "It is not credible that the 2001 authorization to use force provides authority for the president to ignore the requirements of FISA," Smith wrote, adding that if President Bush's executive order authorizing a covert domestic surveillance operation is upheld as legal "it would be a dramatic expansion of presidential authority affecting the rights of our fellow citizens that undermines the checks and balances of our system, which lie at the very heart of the Constitution." Still, one thing that appears to be indisputable is that the NSA surveillance began well before 9/11 and months before President Bush claims Congress gave him the power to use military force against terrorist threats, which Bush says is why he believed he had the legal right to bypass the judicial process. According to the online magazine Slate, an unnamed official in the telecom industry said NSA's "efforts to obtain call details go back to early 2001, predating the 9/11 attacks and the president's now celebrated secret executive order. The source reports that the NSA approached U.S. carriers and asked for their cooperation in a 'data-mining' operation, which might eventually cull 'millions' of individual calls and e-mails." http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011306Z.shtml
I would be interested in seeing that letter since ROXRAN in another thread posted the letter that DOJ sent to Congress stating the Admin's arguments. MC Mark do you have link to the letter mentioned in the quote above?
