Karl Rove: “President Bush thinks that if al-Qaeda is calling someone in this country the government should know who and why.”
This is the argument that Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and George W. Bush are making to justify the warrantless wiretapping of American citizens. I don’t know anyone who disagrees with the statement. We obviously want to monitor all al-Qaeda communications, all the time, no matter the circumstances. The disagreement is over the ‘warrantless’ part of the program.
Now, let’s use our brains here for a moment. The only reason we know about the NSA wiretaps is because “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.”
Do you think that nearly a dozen NSA employees would come forth to leak about a program that was restricted to monitoring al-Qaeda communications?
No?
Well, neither do I. And it isn’t just the NSA that has been guilty of spying on U.S. citizens that have no connection to terrorism.
Back on December 14th, William Arken reported on the 902nd Military Intelligence Group’s infiltration of a Quaker anti-war group. He has more on the story today:
Meanwhile, the Pentagon also released a 2-page January 13 memorandum
(pdf) directing "all DOD intelligence and counterintelligence
(CI) personnel" to receive "refresher training on the policies for
collection, retention, dissemination and use of information related to U.S.
persons."Early
warning on December 14 reported the Pentagon program of domestic
spying, in cooperation with NBC News. A
Defense Department database covering the time period of 2004-2005 and leaked to
this reporter gave a rare look at accelerated U.S. military intelligence
collection since 9/11, including reporting on anti-war and anti-military
recruiting protests throughout the United States.The Defense Department database was prepared by the
Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), which I had already
written about and Walter Pincus began reporting
on for this newspaper in November.Now Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordan England is not only
order (sic) sensitivity training at the Pentagon, but also directing CIFA to purge
its "TALON" database of "any reports that should not be in the
database.
Whenever you come across some idiot, like Bill Maher, that says that they have no problem with the NSA leaks because they want to spy on al-Qaeda, ask them why a court would reject such a request if it had any validity. Ask them if they think Quakers are terrorists, and whether anti-war groups should be safe from unreasonable searches. Ask them why these activities have leaked, if the people carrying them out thought the activities were legal and justifiable.
These are impeachable offenses. Don’t let anyone muddle the issue, or try to play you for a fool.
