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I'm merging my NSA_Wiretaps and CIA/NSA Treason threads into one new larger category called Surveillance/CIA-NSA-Media Treason . Both of the older categories contain posts that would have been in the new category if my crystal ball had been working better.

Posted by Bill Faith on December 28, 2005 at 04:14 PM in CIA/NSA Treason, NSA_Wiretaps, Surveillance/CIA-NSA-Media Treason | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

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Defense Lawyers in Terror Cases Plan Challenges Over Spy Efforts
By Eric Lichtblau and James Risen

WASHINGTON, Dec. 27 - Defense lawyers in some of the country's biggest terrorism cases say they plan to bring legal challenges to determine whether the National Security Agency used illegal wiretaps against several dozen Muslim men tied to Al Qaeda.

The lawyers said in interviews that they wanted to learn whether the men were monitored by the agency and, if so, whether the government withheld critical information or misled judges and defense lawyers about how and why the men were singled out.

The expected legal challenges, in cases from Florida, Ohio, Oregon and Virginia, add another dimension to the growing controversy over the agency's domestic surveillance program and could jeopardize some of the Bush administration's most important courtroom victories in terror cases, legal analysts say.

[Read on here. Hat tip: The Counterterrorism blog]

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Damn it, what does is take to wake some people up? The Constitution protects US Citizens against unreasonable searches and seizures. it does not protect agents of a foreign power against anything, nor should it. Terrorists belong in jail, period, and so apparently do some reporters for some of the major papers. Is it too much to hope for that when the next successful terrorist act happens, which with help like this it will, that Risen and Lichtblau and some others like them will be among the victims?

Posted by Bill Faith on December 28, 2005 at 12:41 AM in CIA/NSA Treason, NSA_Wiretaps, Surveillance/CIA-NSA-Media Treason | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

I'm combining my NSA_Wiretaps and CIA/NSA Treason threads from here out. They're too intertwined to try to keep separate and  I'm not even sure at this point that the wiretaps leak(s) came from within the CIA or NSA.

William Kristol:

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The Paranoid Style In American Liberalism

No reasonable American, no decent human being, wants to send up a white flag in the war on terror. But leading spokesmen for American liberalism-hostile beyond reason to the Bush administration, and ready to believe the worst about American public servants-seem to have concluded that the terror threat is mostly imaginary. It is the threat to civil liberties from George W. Bush that is the real danger. These liberals recoil unthinkingly from the obvious fact that our national security requires policies that are a step (but only a careful step) removed from ACLU dogma.

On Monday, December 19, General Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency and now deputy director of national intelligence, briefed journalists. The back--and--forth included this exchange:

[Read the whole thing here.]

Yup. First the Bush administration will listen in to international communications of a few hundred people in America who seem to have been in touch with terrorists abroad . . . and next thing you know, government hit squads will be killing George W. Bush's political opponents.

What is one to say about these media--Democratic spokesmen for contemporary American liberalism? That they have embarrassed and discredited themselves. That they cannot be taken seriously as critics. It would be good to have a responsible opposition party in the United States today. It would be good to have a serious mainstream media. Too bad we have neither.

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Michael Barone:

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The New York Times' Christmas Gift

The New York Times' Christmas gift -- sorry, holiday gift -- to the nation's political dialogue was its Dec. 16 story reporting that the National Security Agency has been intercepting telephone conversations between terrorism suspects abroad and U.S. citizens or legal residents in the United States.

What the Times didn't bother telling its readers is that this practice is far from new and is entirely legal. Instead, the unspoken subtext of the story was that this was likely an illegal and certainly a very scary invasion of Americans' rights.

Let's put the issue very simply. The president has the power as commander in chief under the Constitution to intercept and monitor the communications of America's enemies. Indeed, it would be a very weird interpretation of the Constitution to say that the commander in chief could order U.S. forces to kill America's enemies but not to wiretap -- or, more likely these days, electronically intercept -- their communications. Presidents have asserted and exercised this power repeatedly and consistently over the last quarter-century.

[Read on here.]

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Thomas Lifson:

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The New York Times Intelligence Scandal

The New York Times and the Democrat Left (the overlap is considerable) have gone into water that may be deeper than they suspect, with the printing of a year-old story based on intelligence leaks, on the very day the Senate voted on cloture for renewing the USA Patriot Act. Democrats are now on the hook for weakening our ability to prevent another 9/11. We hope and trust this failure will be rectified quickly.

[Read the whole thing here.]

Now that the Plame case has established that leaking secrets from the CIA is a crime, and that reporters may be jailed if they refuse to give up their sources, some chickens may well be coming home to roost. It is far too soon for AT to lay out where we think this case may be going, but we think the President’s skill as a poker player, one who knows how to encourage his opponents to bet on a losing hand, is at work once again.

People who pay attention to media spin may think the President is in trouble. We don’t. The fat lady isn’t even to close to singing the finale of this case. Stay tuned.

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Clarice Feldman:

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Round up the obvious suspects

Liberal fantasies of Karl Rove being frog-marched in handcuffs for leaking classified information may turn into a nightmare of prominent liberals being prosecuted for damaging the fight against al Qaeda via leaks of classified data. There are no names on the public record yet, but somebody leaked the classified information about NSA surveillance to James Risen of the New York Times, and a year later his paper published the story.

The pieces falling in place are far from conclusive, but they are mighty suggestive.

[Read the whole thing here.]

... A. J. Strata has a starting point suggestion about the leakers. He notes this graph from the NYT:

“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.”

It does seem to suggest that Senator Rockefeller and ”a judge presiding over a secret court that oversees intelligence matters” were sources for this leak, Strata hints. In fact, if Strata is right, Gonzales may already know that, for Strata adds that press reports to the contrary notwithstanding, Judge Robertson, an activist liberal judge, probably didn’t “resign,” but rather was suspended for that very reason.

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See also:

The Liberal Cabal Against Bush

The Case For Spying

At this point I don't really care who's been passing classified information to the papers. I want them arrested, tried, and shot, the sooner the better.

*** 2005-12-27 PM Update:

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Secret court modified wiretap requests
Intervention may have led Bush to bypass panel

WASHINGTON -- Government records show that the administration was encountering unprecedented second-guessing by the secret federal surveillance court when President Bush decided to bypass the panel and order surveillance of U.S.-based terror suspects without the court's approval.

A review of Justice Department reports to Congress shows that the 26-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court modified more wiretap requests from the Bush administration than from the four previous presidential administrations combined.

The court's repeated intervention in Bush administration wiretap requests may explain why the president decided to bypass the court nearly four years ago to launch secret National Security Agency spying on hundreds and possibly thousands of Americans and foreigners inside the United States, according to James Bamford, an acknowledged authority on the supersecret NSA, which intercepts telephone calls, e-mails, faxes and Internet communications.

[Read on here.]

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Dafydd ab Hugh isn't buying that explanation at all:

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Maybe This Explains It? UPDATED

A UPI report -- if true -- may actually give us some insight into why Bush bypassed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court and ordered, using his own plenary power as president, the National Security Agency (NSA) to intercept foreign-based phone calls and e-mails to known al-Qaeda affiliates and to analyze the traffic patterns of such electronic communications:

[...]

[...]

Nearly all of these demands (97%) occurred in 2003 and 2004, a year after Bush began the NSA program; so Bush's order was clearly not a reaction to being rebuffed, as the newsies will doubtless try to spin it (including UPI above: the court was not yet "challenging him at an unprecedented rate" in 2002, when he made the decision).

But the most plausible explanation to me is that Bush realized we would need vastly increased surveillance of known or suspected terrorists operating within the United States and communicating to al-Qaeda agents abroad... and the president rightly suspected that the plain inertia of the court meant it would forever be a "September-10th" body, unable to deal with the September-11th world in which we now live.

[Read Dafydd's entire post here.]

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The simple fact, friends, is that the President knew he didn't need the FISA courts permission to do what needed done to begin with, so he went ahead and did it. The only question I'm left with is why he even bothered to ask for warrants afterwards.

Posted by Bill Faith on December 27, 2005 at 02:34 AM in CIA/NSA Treason, NSA_Wiretaps, Surveillance/CIA-NSA-Media Treason | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

(Click here to see all of my posts in this series.)

Another good example of why Osama reads al-NYT

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Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report
Eric Lichtblau and James Risen

WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 - The National Security Agency has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity, according to current and former government officials.

The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system's main arteries, they said.

As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications, the officials said.

[...]

What has not been publicly acknowledged is that N.S.A. technicians, besides actually eavesdropping on specific conversations, have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might point to terrorism suspects. Some officials describe the program as a large data-mining operation.

The current and former government officials who discussed the program were granted anonymity because it remains classified.

[Read the rest here. I'm sure al-Queda has.]

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OK, so the NSA's doing its job. I'd pretty much assumed that was true but did the general public really need to know about it? In addition to hanging the scum who leaked the information to the press, I'm beginning to seriously wonder if it isn't time to reexamine the First Amendment. There are people at al-NYT and some other news outlets that deserve some serious jail time for what they've done to weaken this country.

See also: Bush Administration Defends Spying Program

***

Michelle Malkin has much more here.

Dafydd ab Hugh:

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The Times' Reach Exceeds Its Grasp

At this point, it's not even eyebrow-raising that the New York Times is vigorously trying to destroy the foreign-intelligence gathering program run by the National Security Agency (a.k.a., "No Such Agency"). "America's newspaper" being a traitor to America has actually become ho-hum.

The newest attack -- specifically designed to disrupt relations between the United States and our foreign allies in Europe, Latin America, Canada, and the Orient -- is the "charge" that since 9/11, the NSA has actually (please sit down before you read this) analyzed the communications traffic patterns of phone calls into and out of Afghanistan and other terrorist hot spots. That is, they are actually determining how many international calls running through American phone nodes originate from or route to known terrorist sites, how long they last, and how frequently they occur. And without a warrant, b'dad!

[Read on here.]

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Dafydd ab Hugh:

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Speaking Clarity to Obscurantism

I think a lot of folks are still a bit confused about the most recent New York Times accusation against the NSA (Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report), the "superceding indictment" that appears -- from the misleading way they wrote it -- to imply that, rather than the small group of 500 or so foreign terrorists (at any one time) that the Bush administration cheerfully acknowledges wiretapping, the NSA actually "monitored" millions of people.

What the Times wants the reader to walk away thinking is that the phone calls of millions of American citizens are being listened to by the NSA, those blackguards, and that something must be done to rein in this tyrannical police state. But if you closely parse the Times story, you realize that they're not really saying what they're strongly implying. In fact, that larger group of phone calls they're talking about in the most recent article are not being listened to at all.

[Read on here.]

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Baldilocks:

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What They Did For "Love"

I’ve posted little on the NSA story, mostly because of time constraints and because of my pure fury at those in the NSA who would leak classified material to the press and at a press who would publish the material.

I’ve read the stories fronted by the New York Times and funneled by some unknown…person(s) with a Top Secret compartmentalized clearance who is sworn and signed to hold secret his/her government’s means of reconnoitering its enemies. Every new revelation leaves this Cold Warrior—who, once upon a time, swore to and signed the exact same agreements--more disgusted and angry.

[Read on here.]

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Tom Maguire:

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They're Not Going To Stop

The NY Times escalates its war on America with its latest revelations about the high-tech capability of the NSA to monitor and data-mine international communications.

Their first wave of coverage if the "Bush Spied" scandal was fizzling out - even Doug Jehl of the Times admitted the obvious on Friday: ...

[Read on here.]

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Posted by Bill Faith on December 24, 2005 at 04:18 AM in NSA_Wiretaps, Surveillance/CIA-NSA-Media Treason | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

(Click here to see all of my posts in this series.)

From Uncle Jimbo at Blackfive:

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Enemy Signal Surveillance not Domestic Spying

The Justice Department just sent a letter to the House and Senate Intel Committee chairs, both parties, laying out the legal justifications relied on to implement the surveillance of Al-Qaeda contacts here in the US. I don't lawyer, but I assume the President can hire competent enough shysters to ensure his butt was covered before doing something like this. I want to shift the debate a bit and rephrase things.

Al-Qaeda declared war and attacked us on US and foreign soil, so any and all War Powers inherent, implied or contained in emanations of penumbras of the Constitution have been satisfied and are in full effect, in addition Congress gave the President direct Authorization for the Use of Military Force against Al-Qaeda as situations "render it both necessary and appropriate that the United States exercise its rights to self-defense and to protect United States citizens both at home and abroad")

[Read on. ]

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Mackubin Thomas Owens:

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War and Peace
Lincoln and Bush on vigilance and responsibility.

IN JUNE of 1863, Abraham Lincoln wrote a letter to Erasmus Corning, who had sent him the resolutions of the Albany Democratic convention censuring the Lincoln administration for what it called unconstitutional acts, such as military arrests of civilians in the North. This letter remains the best articulation of the problems that a democratic republic faces when confronted by a crisis that threatens the very existence of that republic.

The essence of Lincoln's argument was that certain actions that are unconstitutional in the absence of rebellion or invasion become constitutional when those conditions exists--in other words, "that the Constitution is not in its application in all respects the same in cases of rebellion or invasion involving the public safety, as it is in times of profound peace and public security."

This past Saturday, President Bush issued his equivalent of the Corning letter. In his weekly address to the nation, the president, speaking live from the Roosevelt Room, addressed the failure of the Senate to renew the Patriot Act, which passed that body 98-1 in the wake of 9/11, and forcefully defended his actions in authorizing the National Security Agency "consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations."

He pointed out that the Justice Department and NSA's top legal officials had reviewed the activities permitted under this authorization and that the executive branch had briefed congressional leaders of both parties more than a dozen times on this authorization

[Read on.]

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John Hinderaker:

On the Legality of the NSA Electronic Intercept Program

It has been widely suggested that the NSA electronic intercept program that has been carried out by the Bush administration for the last three years is, or may be, illegal. The New York Times and other media outlets have implied, without saying outright, that the program is unconstitutional or otherwise improper. The Democrats have picked the ball up and run with it; the Democratic National Committee sent out an email yesterday that characterized the program as "illegal surveillance" constituting an "explosive scandal."

In fact, though, if one reviews the controlling legal authorities, it is hard to see what the fuss is about. For purposes of this analysis, I have assumed that the NSA intercepts electronic messages (phone calls and emails); that when the agency learns of a foreign cell phone or email address that is being used by a terrorist, it inputs that phone number or address into its surveillance system and is then able to intercept all incoming and outgoing communications; that the intent of the program is to intercept only international communications, i.e., those where at least one of the parties is located outside the United States; but on relatively rare occasions, communications between two people who are both located in the U.S. are intercepted. Under the governing legal principles, however, the precise details of the program shouldn't make any difference.

The starting point, of course, is the Constitution. Article II of the Constitution sets out the powers and duties of the President. Some people do not seem to realize that the executive branch is coequal with the legislative and judicial branches. The President has certain powers under the Constitution, and they cannot be taken away or limited by Congressional legislation any more than the President can limit the powers of Congress by executive order.

Article II makes the President Commander in Chief of the armed forces. As such he is preeminent in foreign policy, and especially in military affairs. This was no accident; as Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 74, "Of all the cares or concerns of government, the direction of war most peculiarly demands those qualities which distinguish the exercise of power by a single hand." The federal courts have long recognized that when it comes to waging war, the President, not Congress or the courts, is the supreme authority. In Fleming v. Page, 9 How. 603, 615 (1850), the Supreme Court wrote that the President has the Constitutional power to "employ [the Nation's armed forces] in the manner he may deem most effectual to harass and conquer and subdue the enemy."

No one questions this basic principle. If our soldiers or intelligence agencies discover a terrorist in Afghanistan, Iraq or elsewhere, the President or his designees can order an air strike or other attack to kill him. It would be very odd if the President has the authority to kill a terrorist, but not to intercept his telephone calls or search his cave.

[Read. It. All.]

See also: Hello yellow brick road

Posted by Bill Faith on December 22, 2005 at 06:10 PM in NSA_Wiretaps, Surveillance/CIA-NSA-Media Treason | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

(Click here to see all of my posts in this series.)

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Intelligence gathering declared "Too Icky" by media/left

Right now the propriety of spying as a tool of our security apparatus is being attacked by people who would truly love to empty the CIA and NSA. They are unwilling to even countenance the possibility that a single innocent person's call from an old buddy in East Goat Rope, Afghanistan may be overheard by a bored-stiff linguist at the NSA.

Cliff May in The Corner:

If an al-Qaeda operative in Karachi phones someone in Paris, France and tells him to go to the US to carry out an act of terrorism – obviously the President would have the authority to listen to that conversation without a warrant.

But if an al-Qaeda operative in Karachi phones someone in Paris, Texas and tells him to go to Houston to carry out an act of terrorism -- the President would not have that authority to listen to that conversation without a warrant?

[...]

[...]

The media/left have shifted fire since victory in Iraq seems likely even to them. They are now aiming at dismantling our entire ability to know what threats are arrayed against us and to actively interdict them. The entire enterprise of intel gathering is distasteful to their mentality and they have shown no inclination to concern themselves with the harm to our security, those sheepdogs out there will handle that problem, right? They indulge their offended sensibilities and leave the heavy lifting, which they are blissfully unaware of, to the brutes standing watch outside. Then they retire to sip wine and long for a world where these idol-worshipping, un-cultured proles would just shut up and let they, the UN and the EU run the planet to the betterment of all.

[Read on.]

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I haven't seen Power Line devote so much space to one topic since the Ra^thergate days. Click here and scroll, scroll, scroll.

Glenn Reynolds has a good link roundup here.

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President had legal authority to OK taps
By John Schmidt

President Bush's post- Sept. 11, 2001, authorization to the National Security Agency to carry out electronic surveillance into private phone calls and e-mails is consistent with court decisions and with the positions of the Justice Department under prior presidents.

The president authorized the NSA program in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America. An identifiable group, Al Qaeda, was responsible and believed to be planning future attacks in the United States. Electronic surveillance of communications to or from those who might plausibly be members of or in contact with Al Qaeda was probably the only means of obtaining information about what its members were planning next. No one except the president and the few officials with access to the NSA program can know how valuable such surveillance has been in protecting the nation.

In the Supreme Court's 1972 Keith decision holding that the president does not have inherent authority to order wiretapping without warrants to combat domestic threats, the court said explicitly that it was not questioning the president's authority to take such action in response to threats from abroad.

Four federal courts of appeal subsequently faced the issue squarely and held that the president has inherent authority to authorize wiretapping for foreign intelligence purposes without judicial warrant.

In the most recent judicial statement on the issue ...

[Read on.]

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Other recommended reading:

The NSA Story A Layman’s Perspective

The Left is loosing it again with the NSA story

Tech side of NSA story

The tightrope

Why Times Ran Wiretap Story, Defying Bush

Undermining The War Effort

Leadership

Posted by Bill Faith on December 22, 2005 at 02:24 AM in NSA_Wiretaps, Surveillance/CIA-NSA-Media Treason | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

(Click here to see all of my posts in this series.)

You know what, folks? I don't really give a damn if it's legal or not (but I'm pretty sure it is). It needed doing and I'm proud of W for having the balls to have it done. I've wondered sometimes over the past few months whether he was still the same man I voted for last fall, but there hasn't been much doubt recently.

Eric at Myopic Zeal:

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Bush’s “Eavesdropping”

While the Democrats and the press scream about Bush eavesdropping on your grandmother in her nursing home, others are taking a more in depth look at what is going on. Bush has come out swinging on this one, clearly ready to defend what he believes is necessary and right.

[Read on for a good roundup of blogosphere commentary.]

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Armed Liberal:

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Snooping and Spying Oh My

There's a huge rumpus about the disclosure that the NSA intercepted various communications within the US. Other people more knowledgeable than I have discussed the legality; I want to add one small point to the discussion.

First, I'm not outraged that they listened in. I hope they got useful intel.

But second, the boneheaded legal and administrative wrapper around this infuriates me and more, it undercuts the prosecution of the war.

[...]

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Uncle Jimbo:

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Bill Clinton supports warrantless searches in US

Update: To forestall the argument that keeps popping up, I don't believe just because Clinton did it it's OK for Bush to do it (I believe it's just OK period). But if even the pantywaist Clinton admin. thought they had this power then it couldn't be too radical, that and the hypocrisy of those hollering now and silent then chafes a bit.

I always enjoy when the faux outrage over the latest action of W and his band of miscreants is exposed as the joke it is. The sainted Jamie Gorelick, of 9/11 Commission fame and Intel wall-building infamy, argued the case of the Clinton administration that the President had inherent authority even to search residences in furtherance of foreign intelligence gathering.

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Andrew C. McCarthy:

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Warrantless Searches of Americans? That’s Shocking!
Except when it happens every day.

When not cavalierly talking "impeachment," here's the Left's talking point of the day:

What makes this president think he can invade the privacy of Americans without a warrant?

I don't know. Could it be the powers, long recognized by federal law, to:

*  Detain American citizens for investigative purposes without a warrant;

*  Arrest American citizens, based on probable cause, without a warrant;

*  Conduct a warrantless search of the person of an American citizen who has been detained, with or without a warrant;

[...]

These could conceivably be some of the things that the president is thinking about, though certainly not all. I neglected, after all, to mention the long-established "inherent authority" of the president to "conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information," recognized by federal appeals courts and assumed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review in 2002.

Where does this president get such crazy ideas? Obviously, he should be impeached.

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John Hinderaker:

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The Legality of the NSA's Intercept Program

I've been working on and off on the legal issues surrounding the NSA's interception of communications directed to al Qaeda members overseas, some of which originated in the United States. I haven't had time yet to write up a full analysis of the case law. For now, let me just say that the question does not appear to be close. Under all existing authorities, the NSA program, as we understand the facts, was legal.

For now, let me simply quote the November 2002 decision of the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, in Sealed Case No. 02-001:

[...]

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Paul Mirengoff:

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Thoughts on the NSA's intercept program

I'm eagerly awaiting John's analysis of the legality of the NSA's intercept program. For what it's worth, my sense has been that the statutory and constitutional issues are unsettled and perhaps close. Orin Kerr at the Volokh Conspiracy has done a preliminary analysis which suggests that this is the case.

It doesn't appear that the members of Congress who were advised about the warrantless searches thought it self-evident that the searches violated FISA or the Constitution. Thus far, I don't believe any such member has claimed that he or she told the president he was violating the law. (To be sure, a few have claimed, unpersuasively, that they didn't understand that Bush had authorized warrantless wiretaps, and others have said they expressed general "concerns").

[...]

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John Hinderaker:

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New York Times vs. History and the Law

It is quite remarkable that the New York Times has launched a campaign to persuade the American people that the President does not have the power to order warrantless electronic intercepts for national security purposes. No court, as far as I have been able to determine, has ever so ruled. As noted below, the federal courts have consistently held the precise opposite of the position urged by the Times, as in this article from tomorrow's paper, titled "Cheney Defends Eavesdropping Without Warrants."

Has any administration ever backed the position now urged by the Times? It doesn't appear so.

[...]

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SMASH: 

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AS A STORM BREWS on Capitol Hill over revelations that the President authorized the NSA to conduct surveillance within our borders, now is a good time to take a step back, and examine our priorities.

Here are mine:

We must defeat our enemies, and prevent further attacks against our nation.

We must emerge from this war with our Constitution intact.

These basic principles supercede any loyalty or affinity I may harbor for any particular leader or political party.

[...]

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Murdoc:

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Defense Tech on the wiretap story

Check out these links for Defense Tech's take on the "spying on Americans" story:

[...]

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On a related note:

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Beware of the other Jihadi blitzkrieg...
Walid Phares

"Hezbollah successfully recruits computer scientists and is very effective in telecommunications and in encrypting their messages in order to defeat national security agents in Canada and the U.S.," he said." Globe and Mail (Canada). December 20, 2005

Well, as US media struggles with the so-called "affair" of monitoring-the-Terrorists turned (thanks to politics) into spying-against-Americans, another "real" affair with Jihadi technological superiority, thrusts from the northern borders.

[Read on.]

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Posted by Bill Faith on December 21, 2005 at 03:12 AM in NSA_Wiretaps, Surveillance/CIA-NSA-Media Treason | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

(Click here to see all of my posts in this series.)

Looks like it won't be hard to keep this series going for quite a while. Maybe eventually I can post that they just hung the treasonous bastards that leaked important secrets to the al-NYT to begin with. 

John Hinderaker:

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A Really Obvious Point

... [T]here are a couple of fundamental points that, while obvious, haven't been made often enough.

First, those who leap to the conclusion that the intercepts must be unconstitutional seem to assume that all searches require a warrant. That is not correct. The Fourth Amendment prohibits "unreasonable" searches and seizures. Warrantless searches are legal, and appropriately so, in a number of circumstances.

Second, the issue of speed is critical. When we capture a cell phone or laptop being used by a terrorist, it is usually because we captured or killed the terrorist. The amount of time we have to exploit the capture is very short. The terrorists will soon figure out that their confederate is out of business, and stop using his cell phone numbers and email addresses. So if we are to benefit from the capture, we must begin obtaining information right now.

[...]

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Michelle Malkin:

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NSA And The Law: What The Times Didn't Print

There's a wealth of new information and debate in the blogosphere on the NSA special collections program, including non-Bush-bashing independent legal opinions that the NYTimes, unsurprisingly, had no time and space to see fit to print--even after an extra year of research (or whatever they were doing) on the story.

[...]

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WSJ Opinion Journal:

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Thank You for Wiretapping
Why the Founders made presidents dominant on national security.

Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold wants to be President, and that's fair enough. By all means go for it in 2008. The same applies to Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who's always on the Sunday shows fretting about the latest criticism of the Bush Administration's prosecution of the war on terror. But until you run nationwide and win, Senators, please stop stripping the Presidency of its Constitutional authority to defend America.

That is the real issue raised by the Beltway furor over last week's leak of National Security Agency wiretaps on international phone calls involving al Qaeda suspects. The usual assortment of Senators and media potentates is howling that the wiretaps are "illegal," done "in total secret," and threaten to bring us a long, dark night of fascism. "I believe it does violate the law," averred Mr. Feingold on CNN Sunday.

The truth is closer to the opposite. What we really have here is a perfect illustration of why America's Founders gave the executive branch the largest measure of Constitutional authority on national security. They recognized that a committee of 535 talking heads couldn't be trusted with such grave responsibility. There is no evidence that these wiretaps violate the law. But there is lots of evidence that the Senators are "illegally" usurping Presidential power--and endangering the country in the process.

[...]

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Walid Phares:

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Catch them, but do not watch them!..
Spying on al Qaida in America

[...]

During wartime, the military engages in searches and surveillance without a warrant. We do not, for example, require the armed forces to seek a warrant when it conducts visual or electronic surveillance of enemy forces or of a battlefield, or when it searches buildings, houses, and vehicles for the enemy. Nor must military operations within the United States operate under a different rule.

The question is clear: Are we or are we not at war with the terrorists? Osama bin Laden declared that war in 1998. The bipartisan 9/11 Commission wondered why the previous administration refused to do so and the incumbent held off until October 2001. The jihadists are present within the U.S., including those who carry U.S. passports. So are other terror jihadists in Spain, Britain, Holland, or France. By pure rationale, the U.S. government has the duty to use all means (approved by war conventions) to resist the penetration and infiltration of the United States. Doing otherwise is unlawful, unconstitutional, and more importantly to the detriment of the security, and therefore the liberty of the American people. But regardless of any general legal argument, attorney John Yoo provides us with a technical legal provision. He writes:

Therefore, if al-Qaeda forces organize and carry out missions to attack civilian or military targets within the United States, government surveillance of terrorists would not be law enforcement so much as military operations. In such circumstances, when the government is not pursuing an ordinary criminal law enforcement objective, the Fourth Amendment requires no search warrant.

[...]

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Byron York:

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Why Bush Approved the Wiretaps
Not long ago, both parties agreed the FISA court was a problem.

At his news conference this morning, the president explained that he believed the U.S. government had to "be able to act fast" to intercept the "international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda." "Al Qaeda was not a conventional enemy," Bush said. "This new threat required us to think and act differently."

But there's more to the story than that. In 2002, when the president made his decision, there was widespread, bipartisan frustration with the slowness and inefficiency of the bureaucracy involved in seeking warrants from the special intelligence court, known as the FISA court. Even later, after the provisions of the Patriot Act had had time to take effect, there were still problems with the FISA court — problems examined by members of the September 11 Commission — and questions about whether the court can deal effectively with the fastest-changing cases in the war on terror.

[...]

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James S. Robbins

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Unwarranted Outrage
The Times blew our cover.

I have no doubt that revelations in the New York Times that the NSA has been conducting selective and limited surveillance of terrorist communications crossing into or out of the United States will be immensely valuable to our enemies. I also have no doubt that these and similar actions can be legal, even when conducted without warrants.

How could that be? From the sound and fury of the last few days from politicians and pundits, you would think this is a development as scandalous as Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy's authorization to wiretap Martin Luther King Jr. But the legality of the acts can be demonstrated with a look through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). For example, check out section 1802, "Electronic Surveillance Authorization Without Court Order." It is most instructive. There you will learn that "Notwithstanding any other law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year" (emphasis mine).

[...]

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Posted by Bill Faith on December 20, 2005 at 12:25 AM in NSA_Wiretaps, Surveillance/CIA-NSA-Media Treason | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack

(Click here to see all of my posts in this series.)

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High Treason
Dean Esmay

It is not illegal for the U.S. government to listen to conversations of American citizens. It never has been. This may disturb you, this may bother you, this may be something you want to change, but you've never lived in an America where it wasn't true. It is nothing new to the current administration, at all.

[Read the whole thing here.]

Those who revealed this information are not "whistle-blowers." They are traitors. I'm old-fashioned, so I prefer a public hanging or firing squad in response. After a speedy trial at which they were given their full rights to legal representation and a jury of their peers of course.

I'll gladly volunteer to pull the lever or trigger.

Their motivations are irrelevant. It's their actions that matter.

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Dean, I couldn't agree with you more, except that if it were up to me we'd bring back drawing and quartering for slime who leak classified information.

So Cal Lawyer has a good link roundup here. (Hat tip: Dean)

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Don't miss Hugh Hewitt's Presidential Power and the Surveillance of Foreign Powers Conspiring with United States Citizens

Posted by Bill Faith on December 19, 2005 at 03:06 AM in CIA/NSA Treason, NSA_Wiretaps, Surveillance/CIA-NSA-Media Treason | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack

(Click here to see all of my posts in this series.)

Paul Mirengoff and John Hinderaker comment here and  here.

And, of course, the Surrendercrats are already calling for a congressional investigation.

Posted by Bill Faith on December 18, 2005 at 11:54 PM in NSA_Wiretaps, Surveillance/CIA-NSA-Media Treason | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack