It isn’t news that politicians lie, and it isn’t necessarily evidence of wrongdoing when they refuse to comment on something, however when the President of the United States lies to the American people to avoid a potential constitutional conflict, he has ignored his two superiors, those who elected him, and that which the power of the office of the Whitehouse emanates from, and that is by its very nature… well, wrong.

First, president bush said “any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires — a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so.” (From Whitehouse.com, April 20, 2004)

That was 2004, over two years after the NSA Programs were underway, and it was an outright lie to the American people. While it is understandable for Bush to neither confirm nor deny an allegation of the existence of a secret surveillance system, Bush lied to the American people by claiming, absolutely, that they were getting court orders before conducting surveillance.

In late 2005, the New York Times broke a story that directly contradicted Bush’s claim (Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts) The article claimed, among other things that “Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored 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”

Though the administration initially declined to comment on the article, they later confirmed it insisting numerous times in the following days, weeks and months that they are monitoring a small number of people, and only on international phone calls.

According to Alberto Gonzales, in a speech at the Georgetown University Law Center “This program, described by the President, is focused on international communications where experienced intelligence experts have reason to believe that at least one party to the communication is a member or agent of al Qaeda or a terrorist organization affiliated with al Qaeda.”

President Bush himself while visiting wounded troops and their families at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, promised that “The NSA program is one that listens to a few numbers.”
General Michael V. Hayden, the person in charge of the NSA when the program was initiated and a fierce defender of the program, in a speech at the National Press Club on January 23, 2006 declared that “It is not a driftnet over Dearborn or Lackawanna or Freemont grabbing conversations that we then sort out by these alleged keyword searches or data-mining tools or other devices that so-called experts keep talking about.”

Over the last few months, this story has been knocked from the headlines by a variety of issues, some seem an awful lot like political misdirection, some political legitimate. The GOP has done an effective job of avoiding an investigation into the legality of the wiretapping, the executive branch has also managed to squelch an investigation by the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility by not issuing the investigators the proper clearances. President Bush has declared that this program is carefully scrutinized by the executive branch, however blocking an investigation like this makes one question who exactly is scrutinizing it. It seems to me that what it most likely the case is that there is a fairly tightly controlled group of people who are appointed by the President to rubber stamp programs like this, or at the very least, he is picking people who have similar philosophical views of the power of the executive branch.

Now, a story recently published in USA Today declares that “The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans.”

According to their sources, the NSA has been collecting phone call records (not contents of the call) since 2001, in an attempt using data-mining techniques (the same techniques that General Hayden, in his speech at the National Press Club claimed wasn’t being used) in an attempt to find patterns that could theoretically lead to terrorist cells.

Unlike the previous claims of the Bush Administration, these are domestic phone calls, they are indeed a “driftnet” and which numbers are in the database regardless of potential terrorist affiliation. The Bush administration hasn’t confirmed or denied the claims in this article on the grounds of national security, however they are actively trying to stop a lawsuit against AT&T related to the NSA database by asserting the Military and States Secret privilege, and calling for a summary dismissal of the case.

The Bush administration has asked us to put an incredible amount of trust in them in the past 4 years, and they have shown very little credibility in that time. They have hidden behind Presidential Privilege; their party has done what it can to avoid any formal, independent and candid investigation into the actions of the Whitehouse, and they have now declared the intelligence community off-limits from the courts.

It is reasonable to expect state secrets to be kept secret, however when the people’s right to a freedom from illegal search and seizure as well as their guarantee of due process come into direct conflict with the President’s Article II powers, there must be a legal means of resolving that conflict which ensures that the people, who are in fact where the power of the President emanates from are protected. We also should not forget the lessons of history, which have shown us time and time again that ultimately the greatest threat to a nation comes from the leadership growing too powerful, and offsetting the fragile equilibrium that exists in a free society.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 17th, 2006 at 3:22 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.