Decision ‘08

The NY Times’ Scoop On Domestic Spying

The hot story of the day is this piece in the NY Times revealing a previously undisclosed 2002 decision by the Bush administration to allow the NSA to spy on some domestic calls to foreign destinations:

Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible “dirty numbers” linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.

…Nearly a dozen current and former officials, who were granted anonymity because of the classified nature of the program, discussed it with reporters for The New York Times because of their concerns about the operation’s legality and oversight.

According to those officials and others, reservations about aspects of the program have also been expressed by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who is the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and a judge presiding over a secret court that oversees intelligence matters. Some of the questions about the agency’s new powers led the administration to temporarily suspend the operation last year and impose more restrictions, the officials said.

The Bush administration views the operation as necessary so that the agency can move quickly to monitor communications that may disclose threats to the United States, the officials said. Defenders of the program say it has been a critical tool in helping disrupt terrorist plots and prevent attacks inside the United States.

Administration officials are confident that existing safeguards are sufficient to protect the privacy and civil liberties of Americans, the officials say. In some cases, they said, the Justice Department eventually seeks warrants if it wants to expand the eavesdropping to include communications confined within the United States. The officials said the administration had briefed Congressional leaders about the program and notified the judge in charge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the secret Washington court that deals with national security issues.

The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted.

A few thoughts; it’s worth noting that we once again have information leaked with national security implications (Patrick Fitzgerald, are you reading the Times? How about the WaPo?). Second, notice that this was not a secret, Nixonesque operation - other branches of the government were informed.

Most importantly, we are going to have to figure this out as a society. This is not a case of the Bush administration running all over civil liberties - it’s a legitimate problem with how we conduct the War on Terror, and it will exist no matter who wins in 2008. I’m not saying the Bush position here is right or wrong. What I am saying is we need to strip partisanship out of these questions of whether we compromise our security or our civil liberties. It’s not a minor point - and great arguments can be made on both sides of the debate.

Much, much, much more on this issue at Memeorandum and Blogniscient…and Drudge has a bit that puts the timing of this scoop in a questionable light…

14 Responses to “The NY Times’ Scoop On Domestic Spying”

1 Clint Says:
December 16th, 2005 at 2:52 pm
Anyone want to lay odds on James Risen or Eric Lichtblau ever being questioned before a grand jury on this?

The article even gives examples of serious plots that were defused by these methods — methods which have just become far less powerful against any terrorist networks which are capable of sufficient intelligence-gathering to find a copy of the New York Times.

It almost seems like the NYT is daring the administration to haul their reporters before a grand jury so they can scream about repressive Nazi Rethuglicans. (”Help! Help! I’m being repressed…. Now you see the violence inherent in the system!!”) First the CIA air transit company… then the secret prisons… now a perfectly reasonable, very effective intelligence-gathering technique that has already saved hundreds of British and American lives. Where does it end?
2 mtl Says:
December 16th, 2005 at 5:14 pm
Interesting matter for jurisdiction.

Is a sattelite in space, inside US territory? The calls were overseas-if the signal was intercepted after it had left to borders of the US, is it fair game?

High stakes game going on-it suggest that those who would argue that it oversteps the authority of the government-to montior information outside the country are betting aginst a future terrorist attack, that might be prevented.

Ashcroft’s ‘wall-gorelick-9/11 hearings’ moment was a showstopper. This setting up another one.

If the tapping/interrception was done inside the Country, it is bad. If it was done outside…

Interesting too, that it was done by the NSA, and not the CIA. One cannot be trusted, but does that mean the other has quietly been in favor?
3 Joe Says:
December 16th, 2005 at 6:21 pm
Clint: First the CIA air transit company… then the secret prisons… now a perfectly reasonable, very effective intelligence-gathering technique that has already saved hundreds of British and American lives. Where does it end?

Says who? How do you know it’s saved hundreds of lives? Because the Bush Administration or their appointed lackeys say so? Jeeez, people. Installing a police state is sooooooo easy. You guys will accept anything.

I guess it comes down to if you really want to know what your government is doing in your name. If an administration can break the law whenever it feels the need due to “national security”. Does that not bother you, at least a bit?? And before you answer that, just remember one day a Democrat will be back in the White House.
4 mtl Says:
December 16th, 2005 at 6:48 pm
“You guys will accept anything.”

When someone gets prosecuted for the info gathered, for something that was not relevant to terrorism, I’ll freak out.
I accept it now, but do I accept everything?

Go out and get a victim of our over-zealous prosecution of the GWOT, who isn’t a terrorist, and victimized by wire taps…then make your case. I’ll listen.
5 t123456 Says:
December 16th, 2005 at 8:12 pm
I notice the same folks who thought that secret lists of American gun owners are now up in arms over this. I wonder why.

Well this is a serious problem. Those that don’t know anything about the technology of communications are the first to jump. But in times of war some rights have to be suspended to protect the public. If you aren’t an al-Qaeda sleeper, I don’t see the problem.

Apparently Sen Rockerfeller didn’t see a problem either or he would have said so.
6 Clint Says:
December 16th, 2005 at 8:20 pm
Joe-

Can’t have it both ways — the same anonymous sources are claiming that these wiretaps are taking place and that there have been successes (specific examples in the article). You can’t take one as gospel and the other as baseless rumor, unless you have some other sources.

Police state: I’m fairly certain this word doesn’t mean what you think it means. Talk about no-knock warrants and indefinite detentions without probable cause hearings, and I’m right there with you.

What’s going on here is not the administration just doing whatever it feels like — these procedures were authorized by Congress (though we weren’t told about it) and whenever the calls were domestic, they had to be authorized by a judicial warrant. No laws were broken. Not even little ones.

Finally, and most importantly: NO, I do not need to know everything that my government does in my name. Eventually, twenty or fifty years down the road, historians should indeed have access to everything my government did in my name, but not now. Some documents ought to be classified, some actions ought to be secret, some technologies ought not to be shared.
7 peter Says:
December 16th, 2005 at 8:42 pm
I don’t have an issue with surveillance — but I would feel much more comfortable if there were some oversight or mechanism where another set of eyes approves the wiretap (or wireless tap, I guess). Maybe I am missing something, but I don’t see why domestic calls require a warrant and international calls do not.
8 mtl Says:
December 16th, 2005 at 9:20 pm
If the CIA is monitoring an Al-Queda cell in Germany, and someone calls from Boston…they turn off the machine?
9 louielouie Says:
December 16th, 2005 at 9:35 pm
i think this is NSA.
the CIA is too busy leaking secrets.
10 louielouie Says:
December 17th, 2005 at 12:08 am
i really don’t know why this item is an issue. people in general just don’t remember/know.
go here:

http://www.fas.org/irp/facility/menwith.htm

the last phrase of the first para should answer ANY questions.

and JOE, this facility has been in operation through dem & rep administrations.
my only question to you is: are the black helicopters hovering or circling?
your comment about a dem. prez. is truly, truly stupid………given the existence and continuous(trust me) operation of this facility. joe FYI those big white balls don’t hold raquet ball courts.
11 Joe Says:
December 17th, 2005 at 4:04 am
mtl: Go out and get a victim of our over-zealous prosecution of the GWOT, who isn’t a terrorist, and victimized by wire taps…then make your case. I’ll listen.

So we should allow our government to spy on us unless we can prove we aren’t terrorists? Guilty until proven innocent? Didn’t Republicans, some time in the very distant past, have a healthy scepticism towards gubmint?

clint: Talk about no-knock warrants and indefinite detentions without probable cause hearings, and I’m right there with you.

We have been holding hundreds of people indefinately without probable cause hearings, although most are foreigners. But I suppose not having a US passport is their problem. And even Padilla, a US citizen, was held a couple of years without charges.

Governments - left and right - will always try to chip away at our freedoms. It starts as part of the “war on terror” or some other serious issue. But once you feed the beast, it wants more. It starts with illegal detention of foreigners, then it moves on to detaining Americans under “special” circumstances, and then……, etc. Laws focused on terrorism are soon used to harass recreational drug users, potential tax cheats, and later other “enemies of the state” (unfriendly journalists, opposition party members, etc.). Why not? An “unfair” political attack on the President is divisive. Doesn’t that help the terrorists? It’s easy to justify, once you assume the law no longer applies to the executive branch.

Giving government unchecked power is a recipe for disaster. To paraphrase Reagan, “I’m with the government fighting the ‘war on terror,’ and I’m here to help.” Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrghhhhhhh!
12 dmac Says:
December 17th, 2005 at 11:29 am
Joe, the NSA has been around for quite awhile now, and none of these “shocking” disclosures are new, at least with regards to their operating procedures. A good friend of mine toured their massive facilities in England shortly after 9/11, and tourists were actually told of their survelliance on international callers.

Not a big leap for them to make it to our own domestic market.
13 dmac Says:
December 17th, 2005 at 1:04 pm
Here’s a link explaining that the NYT basically had this information for over a year and had already determined that the government wasn’t doing anything illegal.

So why did they sit on the story - gosh, you don’t think it was timed to coincide with the Patroit Act re - authorization? Nah, couldn’t be…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/16/AR2005121601716.html?nav=rss_politics
14 Decision ‘08 » Blog Archive » Has The President Gone Too Far? Says:
December 18th, 2005 at 1:53 pm
[…] I mentioned in an earlier post that this is an issue that is going to have to be resolved in the long term by our society as a whole. There is a glaring conflict between our security and our liberty, and it as wrong to say that we cannot allow government to encroach on our liberty (we do every day, with passports, driver’s licenses, the penal system, etc.) as it is to say all encroachments are justified in the name of national security. […]