From It Was Legal To I Am Lazy: The George Bush Domestic Spy Story

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Fri, 23 Dec 2005 21:30:06 -0500

The George Bush Domestic Spy Story

 

 

 

 

David Sirota: From " It Was Legal " To " I Am Lazy " : The George Bush

Domestic Spy Story

 

Spy Story (112 comments )

READ MORE: Washington Post, New York Times, George W. Bush, Fox News,

Tim Russert

 

Another day, yet another new and wholly different explanation from the

Bush administration about its illegal domestic spying operation.

 

In just the last 5 days, we've seen 3 separate explanations rolled out

from the White House. First they claimed it was legal all along, then

when that didn't fly, they said they had to do it because of a need

for speed.Now that that has been debunked, they are actually claiming

they were just too lazy to do " the paperwork. " On top of this, they

also first told us that the surveillance was only targeted at

international calls – but now today, we learn that isn't true either,

and that Americans are under surveillance on purely domestic calls.

 

Let's just walk through the shenanigans, shall we?

 

When the story first broke, the administration was clearly in panic

mode, and offered up the positively ridiculous claim that the

President has the authority to break the 4th Amendment of the U.S.

Constitution because Congress passed a resolution right after 9/11

saying he should fight Al Qaeda. Of course, the resolution said

nothing about violating the U.S. Constitution, or violating statutes

protecting Americans' civil liberties - and in passing the resolution,

Congress explicitly told the White House that the resolution did not

authorize any extra-legal behavior. And, incredibly, the White House

didn't request changes to those statutes when it passed the original

Patriot Act because it knew Congress wouldn't go along. So instead of

asking for changes to the law, they just broke the law.

 

When their " it was legal all along " argument didn't hold water,

President Bush called a press conference claiming that he needed to

break the law because the operations he was ordering " require quick

action. " He cited how terrorists in the information are able to move

fast, and claimed that the process for getting a warrant would slow

down law enforcement's efforts to catch them.

 

But then that was debunked too, as observers noted that the special

FISA court Bush was legally required to get a warrant from actually

allowed the White House to conduct surveillance, and get a warrant

retroactively, thus not slowing down the process. Additionally, the

FISA court has rejected just 4 warrant requests in a quarter century –

meaning it basically gives away warrants, as long as you can show even

a shred of minimum cause. As Colin Powell noted on ABC'S Nightline:

 

" It didn't seem to me, anyway, that it would have been that hard

to go and get the warrants. And even in the case of an emergency, you

go and do it [begin surveillance]. The law provides for that. And

three days later, you let the court know what you have done, and deal

with it that way. "

 

Now, with two swings and misses, the White House is offering up

perhaps the most pathetic rationale possible: we were lazy, and we

just didn't feel like upholding the law. The administration is

trotting out Michael Hayden, who was NSA director when the

surveillance began and is now Bush's deputy director of national

intelligence. The Washington Post reports that Hayden told reporters

that " getting retroactive court approval is inefficient because it

'involves marshaling arguments' and 'looping paperwork around.' "

 

So now we really see what it's come to. The law is just a nuisance to

these people. They don't feel like " marshaling arguments " or doing the

" paperwork " that the law requires – the law, mind you, that was

written to protect people's civil liberties, and the

arguments/paperwork that are specifically required to make sure there

is a check on Presidents whose henchmen are conducting surveillance

operations on political enemies (ie. civil rights, anti-war,

environmental, animal cruelty, and poverty relief groups).

 

We are supposed to feel ok about all of this because, as the New York

Times noted, " Mr. Bush and his senior aides have emphasized since the

disclosure of the program's existence last week that the president's

executive order applied only to cases where one party on a call or

e-mail message was outside the United States " (as if that means law

breaking is acceptable). But even this inadequate explanation has been

exposed as a lie. As the Times noted, the illegal surveillance program

" has captured what are purely domestic communications. "

 

Throughout all of this, the media and insulated elitists in the

political chattering classes have obediently portrayed the controversy

in " he said, she said " terms, or terms that simply justify

law-breaking. As the President promises to continue breaking the law,

Katie Couric banters back and forth with Tim Russert about how the

only people who care about this are " constitutional scholars " – not

the American people. Bloviators like William Kristol write fawning

congratulations to President Bush for trampling the constitution, and

go on Fox News demanding to know why President Bill Clinton hadn't

trampled the Constitution when he was in office. And the Democratic

Leadership Council, undermining congressional Democrats who are

courageously raising questions, actually says Bush' law-breaking is

entirely justified, even though we haven't been given one

justification that holds water.

 

Yet in the media/punditry's desperate, mob-like rush to kiss the fat

white ass of power even as it farts the most foul-smelling lies right

in their face, none of these people have answered or even asked the

very simple question: If the president is permitted to break this law

with absolutely no concrete justification at all, what law isn't he

allowed to break? Can he walk into a 7-11 and rob it? Can he steal

taxpayer money and pocket it as his own? Or how about executing his

political enemies? Can he do that, as long as he just utters phrase

" national security " over and over again even if it has absolutely

nothing to do with actual " national security? "

 

These may sound like hyperbolic questions – but they cut to what this

really is about. Does the " rule of law, " which President Bush has

talked so much about , actually mean anything anymore in the United

States of America?