Can you conjure up the scene in 2002 when Bush signed a presidential order permitting the NSA, wrote the NYT yesterday, to monitor “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”?
Who conceived and wrote the directive that lets FBI agents monitor U.S. citizens without a court order? Who vetted and proofed the directive? Who presented it to Bush? What did they tell him? Who was in the Oval with him when he signed the directive? What, if any, questions did he ask? Or was it, as I imagine it, simply presented to him as (deep voice here) “It’s necessary, sir, for the national security.” And that that’s all it took to hit one of his primitive synapses and let him lift his pen and hastily scrawl his signature so he could get on with his exercise routine.
But, more sentient beings are enraged which, Susan G at Daily Kos tells us tonight, via MSNBC, extends further than we first knew:
President Bush has personally authorized a secretive eavesdropping program in the United States more than three dozen times since October 2001, a senior intelligence official said Friday night. …
Incredibly, Susan G points out, there are several members of Congress who were aware of the dozens of eavesdropping operations. Then, even more incredibly, there are those who are tolerant of or even vehemently defend these secret, extra-legal authorizations.
There’s Jeffrey Toobin, a CNN legal analyst and New Yorker contributor, who told Wolf Blitzer today:
JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: I guess I wasn’t very surprised or especially outraged, Wolf, because, you know, the law under which this operates was passed in the 1970s when we had one enemy, the Soviet Union, and it was aimed entirely at the problem of spying in the United States. Now we have a situation where we have, unfortunately, many small enemies. And we’re dealing with the problem of terrorism. And most importantly, technology has changed so dramatically, with cell phones and e-mails and BlackBerries, and Sidekicks, that the structure of the law is a little bit obsolete. It probably would have been better for them to change the law than perhaps violate it, but I guess I just wasn’t that shocked.
BLITZER: Well, are you suggesting that some law was violated?
TOOBIN: Well, it might be, because the way the piece — the intelligence was described, it was — under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, if the government wants to do any spying in the United States, they have to go to this special court. … (Read all.)
Then, rather predictably, there’s Rudy Guliani whose op-ed piece in Saturday’s NYT is titled, “Taking Liberties With the Nation’s Security.” Rudy bemoans the Senate’s failure to authorize the Patriot Act, and accuses us of forgetting about September 11, 2001.
It’s at times like this that declarative rants are called for:
JACK CAFFERTY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, good afternoon.
Who cares about whether the Patriot Act gets renewed? Want to abuse our civil liberties? Just do it.
Who cares about the Geneva Conventions. Want to torture prisoners? Just do it.
Who cares about rules concerning the identity of CIA agents. Want to reveal the name of a covert operative? Just do it.
Who cares about whether the intelligence concerning WMDS is accurate. Want to invade Iraq? Just do it.
Who cares about qualifications to serve on the nation’s highest court.Want to nominate a personal friend with no qualifications? Just do it.
And the latest outrage, which I read about in “The New York Times” this morning, who cares about needing a court order to eavesdrop on American citizens. Want to wiretap their phone conversations? Just do it. What a joke. A very cruel, very sad joke.
Here’s the question. Was it appropriate for the president to order wiretaps on American citizens without obtaining a warrant? E- mail us at caffertyfile@CNN.com or you can go to CNN.com/cafferty file–Wolf.
BLITZER: All right. And they can just do that. Right, Jack?
CAFFERTY: That’s correct. Just do it.
BLITZER: They can do it. Just do it like a Nike commercial.
CAFFERTY: Yes.
BLITZER: Jack Cafferty thank you very much. …
Cafferty, every day, injects his surly off-the-cuff remarks into Wolf’s Situation Room. As BooMan told me, fondly, Cafferty is a curmudgeon. I don’t always agree with the man, but damn, I love his surly, ill-tempered rants. Especially when our nation’s administration is pushing us pell-mell into a dark, paranoid post-democratic abyss.
Beyond rage and rants, there are Steve Clemon’s ideas:
Make the List Public: Who Did the White House Spy On?
I don’t care how long the list is of those people and phone numbers that have been surreptitiously monitored by the National Security Agency without court approval. […]
[T]his invasion of privacy in the case of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of American citizens must be challenged in the courts …
… It should be made public because at this point there is NO NATIONAL SECURITY rationale to justify the monitoring of citizens in cases that have not been approved by a court. That means that all of those citizens monitored are innocent — and unwitting victims of this domestic spy campaign launched by George W. Bush.
Publish the list of phone numbers, Mr. President. Do it now or lawyers may start working today to compel you through the courts to do it.
TWN would be happy to provide the bandwidth and home exposing this national intelligence disgrace. (Read all at Washington Note.)
Right on, Steve. I also demand to know who conceived, wrote, and delivered this unAmerican tripe to the boy in the Oval with the pen.
P.S. Don’t miss BooMan’s Back Where We Started.
