Politics Makes Strange Bedfellows

I think some of these guys are less concerned about civil liberties than they are about their obsession with the Hillary Clinton presidency (which will never happen....trust me on this. The netroots hates her, the moderates are threatened by her, and the wingnuts will do whatever they have to in order to prevent it) -- but we'll take it if conservatives are voicing concern about a President claiming the freedom to wiretap anyone he wants with no accountability:

Patriots to Restore Checks and Balances (PRCB) today called upon Congress to hold open, substantive oversight hearings examining the President's authorization of the National Security Agency (NSA) to violate domestic surveillance requirements outlined in the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

Former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr, chairman of PRCB, was joined by fellow conservatives Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR); David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union; Paul Weyrich, chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation and Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, in urging lawmakers to use NSA hearings to establish a solid foundation for restoring much needed constitutional checks and balances to intelligence law.

"When the Patriot Act was passed shortly after 9-11, the federal government was granted expanded access to Americans' private information," said Barr. "However, federal law still clearly states that intelligence agents must have a court order to conduct electronic surveillance of Americans on these shores. Yet the federal government overstepped the protections of the Constitution and the plain language of FISA to eavesdrop on Americans' private communication without any judicial checks and without proof that they are involved in terrorism."

The following can be attributed to PRCB members:

"I believe that our executive branch cannot continue to operate without the checks of the other branches. However, I stand behind the President in encouraging Congress to operate cautiously during the hearings so that sensitive government intelligence is not given to our enemies." -- Paul Weyrich, chairman and CEO, Free Congress Foundation

"Public hearings on this issue are essential to addressing the serious concerns raised by alarming revelations of NSA electronic eavesdropping." -- Grover Norquist, president, Americans for Tax Reform

"The need to reform surveillance laws and practices adopted since 9/11 is more apparent now than ever. No one would deny the government the power it needs to protect us all, but when that power poses a threat to the basic rights that make our nation unique, its exercise must be carefully monitored by Congress and the courts. This is not a partisan issue; it is an issue of safeguarding the fundamental freedoms of all Americans so that future administrations do not interpret our laws in ways that pose constitutional concerns." -- David Keene, chairman, American Conservative Union

Here's my question: If the only people the Administration has under surveillance are known or suspected terrorists, how come this ordinary citizen wasn't allowed to see his own records under the Freedom of Information Act?

On Dec. 20th, I made a formal request to the NSA "...for any records, including electronic intercepts, that include or are related to the following names, screen names, e-mail addresses and/or phone numbers...", those being all the ones I have used in the last 10 or so years. This was done at the same time I wrote a comment urging others to do so, as can be seen here http://www.dailykos.com/...

Today I received a letter from one Louis F. Giles, Suite 6248, NSA, Fort Meade, MD 20755-6000. Mr. Giles is the Director of Policy for the Central Security Service of the National Security Agency.

Mr. Giles denied in full my request.

From Mr. Giles letter:

As you know, the President of the United States "authorized the National Security Agency [(NSA)], consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, to intercept the international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations." The President also noted that, "[t]his is a highly classified program that is crucial to our national security."

Rest assured that safeguards are in place to protect the civil liberties of U.S. citizens. However, because of the highly classified nature of the program, we can neither confirm or deny the existence of records responsive to your request. The fact of the existence or the non-existence of responsive records is a currently and properly classified matter in accordance with Executive Order 12958, as amended. Thus your request is denied pursuant to the first exemption of the FOIA, which provides that the FOIA does not apply to matters that are specifically authorized under criteria established by an Executive Order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign relations and are properly classified pursuant to such Executive Order.

Moreover, the third exemption of the FOIA provides for the withholding of information specifically protected from disclosure by statute. Thus, your request is also denied because the fact of the existence or non-existence of the information is exempted from disclosure pursuant to the third exemption. The specific statutes applicable in this case are Title 18 U.S. Code 798; Title 50 U.S. Code 403-1(i); and Section 6, Public Law 86-36 (50 U.S. Code 402 note).

Note, this is not a request for cryptanalysis information, as in Gilmore vs. NSA, in which this memo states

First, Public Law 86-36, NSA's authorizing statute, provides that "nothing in this Act or any other law . . . shall be construed to require the disclosure of the organization or any function of [NSA, or] of any information with respect to the activities thereof . . ."

No, this is a simple FOIA request to see if my fucking name has been vacuumed up in BushCo's computerized wiretapping efforts of the last several years. After all I have sold my Exerscape software in several foreign countries, such as Britain, Brazil, Germany, the Czech Republic, Spain and Israel. I've been e-mailing and telephoning them multiple times. Plus I've been participating in discussions with a progressive attitude, all over the Internet.

And BushCo's answer is: we don't have to tell you.

This Administration truly believes that it is above the law -- something no other Administration has ever claimed, not even after the Pearl Harbor attack. And yet, the very same people who were ready to bring down a president who didn't regard a blowjob as sex (neither does my mother, by the way...) are perfectly willing to let this president break the law with impunity -- all in the name of "keeping us safe."

Exhibit A: This guy (from a letter in today's Hackensack, NJ Record:

In "No on Alito", (Editorial, Jan. 17), The Record throws around the words "civil liberties." I've heard those two words so many times that they have become nothing more than code that Bush-haters use to imply that President Bush is taking away the rights of ordinary citizens. But I'm not seeing it. I for one want Bush spying on terrorists....I have the civil liberty not to be blown up.

Have we really become this much of a nation of willfully ignorant wusses? NO ONE is opposed to the kind of surveillance needed to thwart another terrorist attack, but what assurance do we have that this president would even look at any evidence collected? After all, this is a guy who didn't think that a PDB stating clearly "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." warranted a break from his vacation.

As for whether the Administration is ONLY spying on terrorists, well, read the above Kos diarist again and tell me they aren't assuming that ALL Americans are terrorists until proven otherwise.

UPDATE: Why illegal surveillance is a nightmare for prosecutions of actual terrorists:

As [former NSA director Michael] Hayden testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee in October 2002, the National Security Agency turns over legally obtained evidence to the FBI in a way that prevents FBI agents from knowing its source or sources. If the NSA hides the source of its legally obtained evidence, it certainly also hides the source of any illegally obtained evidence it may be turning over. Neither illegally obtained evidence, nor evidence gleaned from it, can be used in a criminal prosecution. Consequently, an untold number of successful prosecutions are now jeopardized by the possible use of tainted evidence. Such challenges have already begun in the case of Iyman Faris, who is serving a 20-year sentence for conspiring to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge. In other words, the government's reckless adoption of an illegal surveillance program could actually have the effect of undermining the very prosecutions it claims as its successes in the "War on Terrorism."

The Bush administration, of course, argues that this sort of secret spying is what we have to do for our own security. Indeed, they suggest that if the program had existed prior to 9/11, those attacks might have been prevented because they would have "caught" two hijackers who were making calls to al-Qaida from San Diego. In legal terms, this claim would be called the defense of "necessity," but, in lay terms, this claim would be called "a big fat lie" -- and a poorly chosen one at that.

The hijackers to whom Bush and his advisors are referring are Khalid al-Midhair and Nawaf al-Hamzi. It is astounding that Bush should cite them in support of the illegal spying program, because the NSA knew about these two men and their relationship to al-Qaida as early as 2000 as a result of a legal wiretap they had on a safe house in Yemen. But they never bothered to place them on a watch list or provide detailed information about them to the FBI or the CIA. NSA's Michael Hayden said they failed to provide the information to other agencies because they didn't appreciate its significance.

The problem at that time, as the 9/11 Commission and so many other investigative bodies have found, was failure to communicate among the agencies, or even within the agencies. The NSA was unable to recognize the importance of its own information because it didn‘t know what the other agencies knew, and was institutionally incapable of sharing even legally obtained information because it was operating as a lone wolf. Ironically, in the hands of President Bush, the NSA has effectively become even more isolated -- essentially an outlaw. And it still does not know everything that the other agencies know, so it has no more capability of recognizing the importance of what it learns now than it did before. So it is difficult to imagine how it can now possibly use its illegally obtained information to prevent attacks.

It appears, then, that President Bush, using his wholly fabricated Unitary Executive Theory, has clandestinely managed to marginalize his own agencies and eviscerate many of the information-sharing benefits of his own Patriot Act. When will we, as a country, finally stop thinking that the president knows best?