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Bush Orders Spy Agency to Wiretap U.S.
by Joe Auciello / June 2006 issue Socialist Action
“If this were a dictatorship, it would be a
heck of a lot easier, just as long as I am the dictator,” President George
W. Bush told reporters after the 2000 election. Apparently, he wasn’t joking.
Following the 9/11 attacks, President Bush secretly ordered the National
Security Agency to wiretap—without a warrant—American citizens who made
phone calls or sent e-mails overseas.
The president claims that his role as
commander-in-chief allows him to authorize these wiretaps without the
permission of any court. He claims, further, that a congressional
resolution passed shortly after 9/11, which allows the president “to use
all necessary and appropriate force” against the attackers, provides him with
the authority to eavesdrop on Americans who communicate with people
overseas.
President Bush’s argument is an
ill-disguised and illegal power-grab that diminishes the civil rights of
Americans. Bush’s actions to mandate domestic spying violate the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), a 1978 law passed by Congress after
it had been revealed that President Richard Nixon had improperly ordered
the FBI to spy on U.S. citizens, especially those who Nixon considered his
political enemies.
The fig-leaf FISA legislation was approved
by Congress to give the impression that Americans’ civil liberties and
democratic rights were henceforth to be protected. FISA essentially
transferred the authority to grant emergency warrants to spy on U.S citizens
from the president or other federal agencies to 11 judges appointed by the
Supreme Court.
President Bush broke this law, believing
that even its minimal constraints were too much for a president who wants
to make executive power absolute. Furthermore, in a Dec. 17 radio address
from the White House, he announced his intention to continue with his
policy of unauthorized domestic spying.
The actual application of the FISA law has
been nearly completely favorable to the executive branch of government. The
New York Times (Dec. 23) reports: “It is not altogether evident why the
government has viewed the FISA court as an obstacle. The annual statistical
summary provided by the court shows that the panel has overwhelmingly
approved the warrants sought by the Justice Department. From 1995 to 2004,
the court received 10,617 warrant applications, according to figures
compiled by the Federation of American Scientists. It turned down only
four.”
What Bush does claim with far more
justification is that his policy was carried out with the knowledge and
support of key members of Congress, leaders of the Democratic Party.
According to The New York Times (Dec. 23), “At least seven Democratic
lawmakers are known to have been briefed about the program since its
inception in 2001,” including top Democrats in the House and Senate
Intelligence Committees.
Before authorizing wiretapping and
monitoring conversation, Bush notified Senate minority leader Harry Reid
(D-Nev.) and House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, (D-Calif.). Following the
public exposure and public outcry of the NSA’s actions, both Democrats have
since tried to distance themselves from the president’s illegal policies.
Senator Reid, for instance, now calls for a
congressional investigation into the president’s actions. Additionally,
three Democratic senators have called for an end to the NSA operations
pending a hearing in Congress.
The scope of this domestic spying program
is not clear. White House officials have not provided information about the
number of people being monitored, though initial reports of hundreds seems
to fall far short of the actual number.
In addition to NSA spying, the “war on
terror” has been used as the rationale for other federal and local agencies
to spy on U.S. citizens. NBC News revealed that the Pentagon has been
gathering intelligence on antiwar protesters, compiling a database of 1500
“suspicious incidents.”
Plainclothes police in New York City have
been accused of impersonating antiwar protesters in order to monitor and
secretly videotape the demonstrations, and, in at least one instance at the
Republican National Convention, inciting a confrontation between protesters
and police.
The FBI, in turn, according to documents
released by the ACLU, is collecting information on groups and individuals
ranging from animal rights and environmental activists to the Catholic
Workers Movement, an antipoverty group that, according to the FBI,
“advocates a communist distribution of resources.” Naturally enough, FBI
spokesmen deny any wrongdoing and claim that their snooping is connected to
investigations of suspected terrorists.
What is ignored in the government’s
rationalizations is a fundamental principle of democracy: The government
has no right to oversee and gather information on legal political activity,
even if it is activity aimed against the current
administration.
The Bush agenda, which treats civil
liberties as a casualty of war, is hardly limited to illegal use of the
National Security Agency and other federal agencies. This administration
attempts to use the media as an extension of government.
The New York Times, which finally broke the
story (Dec. 16), did not publish their report for a year, at the urging of
the White House. Even then, according to The Times, administration
officials were allowed prepublication review of the article, and cuts were
made at official request.
The telecommunications industry has been
cooperating with federal agencies and providing the government with massive
amounts of communications data, allowing the NSA “to obtain backdoor access
to streams of domestic and international communications” (The New York
Times, Dec. 24).
In addition, in a number of significant
ways, government policies and practices have eroded civil rights at home
and abroad. The USA Patriot Act, initially approved with near unanimity by
Congress and recently extended while Congress deliberates certain
revisions, increases the scope of legal eavesdropping and allows government
agents to obtain bank and hospital records and other personal documents,
including information from businesses and libraries about book purchases,
book lending, and internet use. The law enables the attorney general to
authorize wiretaps before a judge has issued a warrant, if federal agents
later present evidence in court.
Further, the Bush government has tried to
undermine the long-standing international agreements by claiming that “war
on terrorism” prisoners held by the U.S. in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba are enemy
combatants and are not allowed the rights given them under the Geneva
Conventions.
Bush has also claimed that his authority as
commander-in-chief allows him to order the arrest and imprisonment of U.S.
citizens without trial if they are suspected of having links to terrorists.
The Bush administration has also argued
that the United Nations Convention Against Torture does not apply to U.S.
interrogators who operated outside of this country. Only in December 2005
was the president forced to accept a law specifying that the torture
convention standards applied outside of the United States, as well.
In addition, the Washington Post reported
that U.S. intelligence agencies operate secret detention facilities
overseas. The House has requested information abut these facilities and how
they are run.
Even the presiding judge of the FISA court
is asking the Justice Department to explain in a classified briefing why it
has ignored the federal law that requires that court’s permission before
wiretapping can be permitted in the United States. This public request
followed the news that one federal judge had resigned from the 11-member
surveillance court after President Bush insisted that he had the right to
bypass it.
These policies on the part of the president
show a clear pattern of domestic and foreign abuse of civil and human
rights. The current revelations about illegal spying on U.S. citizens by
the NSA need to be seen in the wider context of an on-going government
assault on the freedom of its citizens.
The illegal practices of the Bush
administration are hardly new in recent American history: “Domestic
intelligence activity has threatened and undermined the constitutional
rights of Americans to free speech, association, and privacy.” This was the
finding 30 years ago of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence headed
by Sen. Frank Church, which investigated FBI and CIA practices of spying on
U.S. citizens.
This Senate committee discovered that the
federal government had assembled files on thousands of Americans who had
broken no law but were “suspect” because they had protested the war in
Vietnam or demonstrated for civil rights. Wiretaps had been placed on
figures like Martin Luther King Jr. (awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964
while under federal surveillance) and Malcolm X; dissident groups had been
infiltrated, disrupted, and provoked by agents provocateurs.
The Bush administration would return the
United States back to the days when President Richard Nixon was able to
say, “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.” Nixon
was wrong then, and Bush is wrong today.
The battle for democratic rights in the
U.S. is an on-going struggle, a struggle too important to be left to the
politicians of either party. Despite outbursts of bold rhetoric, especially
by some prominent Democrats, Congress has no stomach for the fight and will
act only when it is forced to do so.
The kind of popular protest and public
outcry that won victories for democratic rights in the past is needed again
today. Americans not only have the right to know the truth about the Bush
administration’s spy campaign, they have the right and the power to stop
it.
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