Decision ‘08

Two Slams on the NSA Program From Opposite Poles

…[P]erhaps no future president will ask for such congressional involvement in the gravest decision government makes — going to war. Why would future presidents ask, if the present administration successfully asserts its current doctrine? It is that whenever the nation is at war, the other two branches of government have a radically diminished pertinence to governance, and the president determines what that pertinence shall be. This monarchical doctrine emerges from the administration’s stance that warrantless surveillance by the National Security Agency targeting American citizens on American soil is a legal exercise of the president’s inherent powers as commander in chief, even though it violates the clear language of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was written to regulate wartime surveillance.

That last assertion is questionable - see Captain Ed (or perhaps a better way to put it would be that Will’s statement is not wrong, but incomplete - Glenn Greenwald makes a good case for FISA intending to cover times of both war and peace)…

The NY Times:

Is there any aspect of President Bush’s miserable record on intelligence that Senator Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is not willing to excuse and help to cover up?

For more than a year, Mr. Roberts has been dragging out an investigation into why Mr. Bush presented old, dubious and just plain wrong intelligence on Iraq as solid new proof that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and was in league with Al Qaeda. It was supposed to start after the 2004 election, but Mr. Roberts was letting it die of neglect until the Democrats protested by forcing the Senate into an unusual closed session last November.

Now Mr. Roberts is trying to stop an investigation into Mr. Bush’s decision to allow the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans without getting the warrants required by a 27-year-old federal law enacted to stop that sort of abuse.

Mr. Roberts had promised to hold a committee vote yesterday on whether to investigate. But he canceled the vote, and then made two astonishing announcements. He said he was working with the White House on amending the 1978 law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, to permit warrantless spying. And then he suggested that such a change would eliminate the need for an inquiry.

To which Roberts reportedly replied: I know you are, but what am I?…

UPDATE 9:05 a.m.: Andrew McCarthy is singularly unimpressed with Will’s column…

9 Responses to “Two Slams on the NSA Program From Opposite Poles”

1 too many steves Says:
February 17th, 2006 at 8:20 am
The way I heard it, Roberts really said: “I’m rubber and you’re glue…”.

The problem I have with the currently tracking approach is that it avoids answering the question of which branch wins in this conflict of Legislative versus Executive power.

But, be that as it may, Roberts is pursuing a political solution to a political problem. I’m not sure why the NYT would object to that - unless, of course, they have some investment in seeing GWB lose.
2 Jacques Distler Says:
February 17th, 2006 at 9:11 am
Captain Ed is factually wrong about FISA and “peacetime.” See Glenn Greenwald.
3 Mark Says:
February 17th, 2006 at 9:19 am
Duly noted…I’m putting in a small update….
4 dmac Says:
February 17th, 2006 at 10:13 am
As per usual, I will not comment on a subject in which I’m not well - versed on. However, has anyone been discussing the fact that it’s almost impossible to eavesdrop on internet calls, as least as they’re currently constructed? I’m not a techno - geek, but current models don’t seem to permit this - is there any reason the terrorists cannot go to this medium (or perhaps already have) in order to communicate effectively, without fear of oversight?
5 peter Says:
February 17th, 2006 at 10:18 am
The Times excerpt isn’t a slam on the NSA program — it’s a slam at Pat Roberts for stone-walling and impeding Congressional oversight of the faulty Iraq intelligence as well as the FISA violations –
6 Jacques Distler Says:
February 17th, 2006 at 10:23 am
If you are talking about domestic internet traffic, then yes, it’s hard to monitor because there are so many possible paths between ‘point A’ and ‘point B’. If you are talking about Internet traffic between the US and Europe or between Europe and Asia (say), then I disagree.

There are maybe a dozen or so backbone routers (all on US soil) you would need to monitor to capture essentially all such traffic.

Rest assured that the NSA is doing precisely that. (And has been doing so for many years.) If you’ve ever visited the Al Jazeera web site, they certainly know about you.
7 Mark Says:
February 17th, 2006 at 10:26 am
Then they’ve got me…I’ve been to the Al Jazeera website on numerous occasions (of course, the English version is seldom updated - for some odd reason they don’t translate all of their stories! Can’t imagine why that is)…

peter, not so…here’s how the Time’s editorial ends: “FISA does not in any way prevent Mr. Bush from spying on Qaeda members or other terrorists. The last thing the nation needs is to amend the law to institutionalize the imperial powers Mr. Bush seized after 9/11.”

Yes, they slam Roberts…they’re also slamming Bush’s program…
8 peter Says:
February 17th, 2006 at 10:46 am
OK, just read your excerpt, haven’t gotten to the paper yet today –
9 Constant Says:
February 17th, 2006 at 4:35 pm
There’s no reason to wait until 08, or the November election — There’s a way to compel Congress to investigate, even if they refuse: [ Click ]