The President, the Stripper, the Attorney-General

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" Zepp " <zepp

Thu, 09 Feb 2006 07:02:36 -0800

[Zepps_News] The President, the Stripper, the Attorney-General

 

 

The President, the Stripper and the Attorney General

 

-The extraordinary legal defense of George Bush's domestic spying

reads like a blend of Kafka, Le Carré and Mel Brooks

 

Sidney Blumenthal, The Guardian, February 9, 2006

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1705511,00.html

 

In 1996, Governor George W Bush received a summons to serve on a jury,

which would have required his admission that 20 years earlier he had

been arrested for drunk driving. Already planning his presidential

campaign, he did not want this information made public. His lawyer

made the novel argument to the judge that Bush should not have to

serve because " he would not, as governor, be able to pardon the

defendant in the future " . (The d efendant was a stripper accused of

drunk driving.) The judge agreed, and it was not until the closing

days of the 2000 campaign that Bush's record surfaced. On Monday, the

same lawyer, Alberto Gonzales - now attorney general - appeared before

the senate judiciary committee to defend " the client " , as he called

the president.

 

Gonzales was the sole witness called to explain Bush's warrantless

domestic spying, in obvious violation of the foreign intelligence

surveillance act (Fisa) and circumvention of the special court created

to administer it. The scene at the Senate was acted as though scripted

partly by Kafka, partly by Mel Brooks, and partly by John le Carré.

After not being sworn in, the absence of oath-taking having been

insisted upon by the Republicans, Gonzales offered legal reasoning

even more imaginative than that he used to get Bush off jury duty: a

melange of mendacity, absurdity and mystery.

 

The attorney general argued that Fisa did and did not apply; that the

administration was operating within it, while flouting it; and that it

didn't matter. The president's " inherent " power, after all, allowed

him to do whatever he wanted. It was all, Gonzales said, " totally

consistent " . His explanation, observed Senator Arlen Specter, the

Republican chairman of the judiciary committee, " defies logic and

plain English " .

 

Congress, Gonzales elaborated, had no proper constitutional role, but

in any case had already approved the president's secret program by

voting for the authorization of the use of military force in

Afghanistan - even if members didn't know it; or even, when informed

years later that they had approved the secret program, objected that

they hadn't known that that was what they were doing.

 

The legislation that was ignored, Gonzales declared, shouldn't be

amended to bring this domestic spying under the law because the secret

program was already legal, or might be legal; and anyway it doesn't

matter if Congress says it's legal. The all-powerful president should

be trusted, but when Bush states wrongly that he goes to court for

warrants, it's all right that he doesn't know what he is talking

about. " As you know, " said Gonzales, " the president is not a lawyer. "

 

Who was or wasn't being spied on couldn't and wouldn't be explained.

When Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, asked whether

the program could be used to " influence United States political

processes, public opinion, policies or media " , Gonzales replied:

" Those are very, very difficult questions, and for me to answer those

questions sort of off the cuff, I think would not be responsible. "

When Senator Joseph Biden, Democrat of Delaware, asked for assurances

that only al-Qaida or suspected terrorists were subjected to

surveillance, Gonzales answered: " Sir, I can't give you absolute

assurance. "

 

Nor would he say what the program really was. " I am not comfortable

going down the road of saying yes or no as to what the president has

or has not authorized, " Gonzales said. " I'm not going to respond to

that. I'm not going to answer. "

 

Gonzales's ultimate argument was an appeal to history. George

Washington, he pointed out in a display of erudition, " intercepted

British mail " , footnoting a 1997 CIA report on the subject. In the

civil war, the telegraph was wiretapped. And during both the first and

second world wars, communications were intercepted. Gonzales's

ahistoricism about technology aside (George Washington had no cell

phones to tap, no computers to hack), Washington, Lincoln and

Roosevelt could not have broken a law that did not exist.

 

Through his convoluted testimony, the attorney general represented

" the client " as a useful factotum again. But in his tour of history,

he neglected the disclosure by the Associated Press on February 3 of

about 200 pages of documents from the White House of President Gerald

Ford. These papers highlighted the objections made by Ford's secretary

of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, and his chief of staff, Dick Cheney, to

getting court warrants for domestic surveillance. It was partly to

thwart such unaccountable executive power that Congress enacted Fisa

in 1978.

 

Once again Cheney, the power behind the throne, has found a way to

relieve the frustrations of the past. But he is fulfilling more than

the curdled dreams of the Nixon and Ford era. The Bush presidency is

straining to realize a pre-Washington ideal - unconstitutional monarchy.

 

--Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Clinton, is

the author of " The Clinton Wars. "

 

--

" Now, by the way, 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 "

-George W. Bush, April 20, 2004

 

!

Pay your taxes so the rich don't have to.

 

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