President To Hold Surprise Press Conference
What bubble? Critics of the President, I’m sure, think they have him on the ropes again with the NSA eavesdropping story. Yet, at 9:30 central, Bush will hold a press conference. Expect almost every question to be about the NSA…
UPDATE 10:21 a.m.: Bush came out swinging on the eavesdropping issue, saying it would continue, it was legal, and the leak will be investigated:
President Bush on Monday said disclosure of his domestic eavesdropping program was a “shameful act” and said he will keep using it “for so long as the nation faces the continuing threat of an enemy that wants to kill American citizens.”
“As president of the United States and commander in chief I have the constitutional responsibility and the constitutional authority to protect our country,” he said in an opening statement at a year-end news conference.
Asked if the Justice Department would be investigating who leaked the existence of the program, first disclosed last week by The New York Times, Bush said he presumed the process had started.
“It was a shameful act for someone to disclose this important program in a time of war. The fact that we’re discussing this program is helping the enemy,” he said at the White House event.
Normally, no wiretapping is permitted in the United States without a court warrant. But Bush said he approved the action without such orders “because it enables us to move faster and quicker. We’ve got to be fast on our feet.
“It is legal to do so. I swore to uphold the laws. Legal authority is derived from the Constitution,” Bush added.
The existence of the program triggered an outpouring of criticism in Congress, but an unflinching defense from Bush and senior officials of his administration.
The president spoke not long after Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Congress had given Bush authority to spy on suspected terrorists in this country in legislation passed after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Bush and other officials have said the program involves monitoring phone calls and e-mails of individuals in this country believed to be plotting with terrorists overseas. They have also emphasized that it only involves people suspected of being tied to al-Qaida and that one end of the communication has to be abroad.
Bush stressed that calls placed and received within the United States would be monitored as has long been the case, after an order is granted by a secret court under the provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
I’m not so sure that “bubble” means what they think it means.
Here’s a link detailing a 60 minutes segment on the NSA (from 2000!) – it clearly outlines that everything going on in this supposed “scandal” has been well – documented for years now.
Who among the MSM is going to keep saying with a straight face that they were entirely ignorant of what was going on? And the congress? The public? Please.
Hearings of course should be held on this issue going forward, but ignorance, as they say, is no excuse.
http://cryptome.org/echelon-60min.htm
The NSA is spying on people? Inconceivable!
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140067485/qid=1135010084/sr=2-3/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_3/002-9857069-5632046?s=books&v=glance&n=283155
It may be abit tangential, but I’m trying to understand the substantive difference between what Bush has been doing and what is “supposed” to happen, i.e.; “that calls placed and received within the United States would be monitored as has long been the case, after an order is granted by a secret court under the provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.”.
A secret court? Where is the protection and accountability in that?
So “dmac” likes rationale #5 for shredding the Constitution.
What’s your favourite rationale? #6 sounds pretty good.
Personally, I don’t see what all the fuss about renewing the Patriot Act is all about. I mean, if the President can authorize all the activities covered by the Patriot Act, simply by signing an Executive Order, who cares about the PA?
I say: torture a couple of Democratic Senators, and they’ll come around on this filibuster nonsense right quick.
Jacques – I like your torture idea – FINALLY you’re talking some sense…I think I would fall into number six under the Crooked Timber list…
In all seriousness, I do think that I (just me, not anyone else) really do need more information on this before I can render a proper judgement…the objection that the secret courts never turn down a request (only 5 out of 19,000, according to the press conference today) does seem a strong one – so my question would be why the President initiated this? Contra his opponents, clearly he didn’t do this just to trample on civil liberties – he must have seen some shortcoming in the FISA system, and I’m not sure I’m entirely clear on the rationale yet…
Don’t hold your breath, Mark.
In his Press Conference, today, the President said quite explicitly that he does not intend to offer any further explanations for why he authorized the NSA to circumvent the FISA system.
Well, I guess the reason given is the need to move fast:
“The whole key here is agility,” Hayden said, explaining why the government avoided the court approval required by FISA. The program requires a “quicker trigger and softer trigger” than the FISA-approved eavesdropping, he said.
It’s an incredible low. But I admire his arrogance. Don’t bother to explain, full steam ahead! And of course the Amen chorus will back him all the way to the end. Can’t wait to see President Dean wiretapping Republicans without court orders! That’s going to be fun to watch!
Impeach.
By the way, here’s a good summary of why this is so important:
http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2005/12/claiming-right-to-break-law.html#links
Also, something is definately going on here. Bush had all the power he needed under current laws to do what he claims he wants to do. That means either (1) they were spying on people they had no right to spy on, or (2) they have some new way to spy on us and they want to keep it ultra top secret. Some James Bond techie sh#t that no judge would allow the NSA to use, but something that may be yielding some decent info. Very Big Brother-ish…..
/conspiracy rant
Well, Joe, apparently, after reading the defense by other government officials, as I said above, the justification given by the Administration is that speed is of the essence…I’m not saying you have to agree with that justification, but it takes some of the conspiracy theory gloss off of it…
You know, I may have to rethink my previous rejection of the tinfoil hat fashion accessory. Not only that, I’m going shiny side out! I’m thinking Gene Hackman in “Enemy of the State” or Mel Gibson in “Conspiracy Theory”. Oh wait, Gibson tinfoiled his entire apartment, didn’t he? Phew, that seems like way too much work.
Seriously, this only applies to hard wired communications, correct? They can listen to our mobile phones (and wireless modems?) any time they want, right?
That’s it – no more credit cards, atm cards, cell phones, wifi, email, and I’m dumping my SpeedPass.
Mark: speed is of the essence…
OK, how did the law slow them down? Why did they have to circumvent it? They have 72 hours to obtain the warrant. That’s three days! And they don’t have to stop listening while they wait for the court order.
Doesn’t. Make. Any. Sense.
You are being lied to, Mark. And, by the way, if 72 hours is not enough time to obtain a warrant (which is silly), why didn’t they just change the law? Ask Congress for 5 days. Or whatever they think is reasonable. Why couldn’t they do this legally? “Speed is of the essence, so we’re going to ignore any laws that slow us down…..” Huh?
Hey, I just said you didn’t have to accept it…I’m just saying that appears to be the justification…
I can now set a clock by Joe’s always available retort, “You’re being liiiiieeeeedddd to, Mark!” Still waiting for the follow – up post along the lines of ChimpyMcBushHitlerHalliburtonBloodForOil etc.
Oh well, even a broken clock is right twice every 24 hours.
More likely, they’re doing something for which not even the accomodating FISA courts would grant them a warrant.
For instance, if they were doing an “Echelon”-style monitoring of all international phone calls and email traffic. Or merely monitoring the phone calls and email traffic of anti-War groups and political bloggers.
As Joe said, if all they needed was speed, and 72 hour grace period for obtaining a post-facto warrant was not enough, they could have asked for an amendment to FISA, extending the grace period to something longer.
Nope. That “explanation” holds no water. But don’t expect a better one to be forthcoming.
I also like Joe’s reference source of a clear liberal partisan source to support his thesis – perhaps I should list Rush Limbaugh as an impartial source for my opinions.
And Jacques, nice glib response to what I sourced, but if you bothered to notice the references I listed were 60 minutes (Liberal with a capital “L”) and the author of a book on the NSA that used former employees as his main sources, who were worried about what the NSA was legally allowed to do with regards to their SOP.
Both of these source materials are without question unfavorable to Bush and Co, but what they shed light on is going to be the central tenet of the debate coming up. If you think I’m making a case for shredding the constitution here, please read my reference sources before making inane conclusions – the laws were already signed, sealed and delivered by a bipartisan congress back in the Reagan years (were you even alive at that time, I wonder?).
What the NSA can do abroad is an entirely different question from what they are allowed to do inside the US. FISA explicitly forbids them from doing what the President authorized them to do. And a “plain reading” of the 4th Amendment implicitly forbids it. (That’s not quite the same thing as saying that the President’s Executive order was de jure unconstitutional. The Supreme Court will, ultimately, have to decide that. Better hope the Alito nomination goes through smoothly.)
Jacques – true enough, and when you look at Mark’s latest post on the Clinton years of NSA – approved eavesdropping on our own citizens, you might be inclined to agree on my point that this has been going on a lot longer than the scandal du jour we’re being spoon – fed lately.
Bzzzt!
Echelon, as controversial as it was (if it existed; Washington denies its existence to this day) was not directed at intercepting the communications of US residents. Whatever NewsMax may say about it, it’s not even remotely equivalent to what went on here.
If this were a domestic version of Echelon (I rather doubt it, but who knows?), then this is a much bigger scandal than anyone currently imagines.
Maybe I should take that back. Here’s a passage from the original NYT article
That sure sounds like it could be large-scale Echelon-like surveilance of domestic communications, dunnit?
No way they could get a FISA warrant for that, could they?
No wonder that
That’s the most novel reason I’ve heard yet for cheering the bush victory over Kerry.
Yes, it looks more like a technological play here. Josh Marshall suggested data mining. I work with a lot of companies in this field, along with voice monitoring companies (using technology to detect high caller stress levels due to subtle voice fluctuations, etc.) and the technology has improved immensely over the past 5 years. Banks use it to detect credit card cheats, by the way.
I can see where some company would “sell” their vision to the white house. So they could have easily began monitoring all calls from a suspected terrorist phone, hoping to detect links to callers with high stress levels in their voices. They would then follow up later with a proper warrant.