Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts (click here)
...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 in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications....
The New York Times broke the story regarding a direct assault on the American people by the Bush White House and it has remained a complete and absolute insult to the ability of the Intelligence Departments of this country.
The USA has retreated into 'picking up' after Bush and Cheney messes lead by the former majority judiciary Chair Senator Arlen Spector. It's treason. Bush and Cheney cry about having to face securing the USA without adequate laws. Yet, immediately after September 11, 2001 there were three laws passed to allow greater control of the circumstances of the USA. Through political intimidation, as a nation looked for a president that would stop al Qaeda, the Policy of Pre-Emption was passed, along with two other disasterous legislation. Yet, there was no insight by Bush and Cheney regarding FISA? Sure there wasn't.:
December 20, 2005 (click here)
"The fat's in the fire," Mr. Specter said. "This is going to be a big, big issue. There's a lot of indignation across the country, from what I see."
December 23, 2007 (click here)
...Congressional aides from both parties said Thursday that their leaders were weighing a number of options for further inquiries into the matter. In the Senate, Mr. Specter and Mr. Roberts were said to be talking with Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Republican leader, about a possible division of labor between their committees. But they said it was unlikely that any hearings would be held until Congress convenes again in late January....
December 31, 2007 (click here)
...Questions about the surveillance operation are likely to be central to a Congressional hearing planned by Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who heads the Judiciary Committee. Mr. Specter, like some other Republicans and many Democrats in Congress, has voiced deep concerns about the program and Mr. Bush's legal authority to bypass the courts to order domestic wiretaps without warrants....
January 12, 2007 (click here)
...Senator Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has scheduled open hearings, and the Senate Intelligence Committee has said it plans closed hearings.
The president's legal justification for the N.S.A. program has gotten mixed reviews, ranging from enthusiastic to skeptical to scathing.
This week, Representative Jane Harman of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, released a 14-page legal analysis she had requested from a former C.I.A. general counsel, Jeffrey H. Smith, now a Washington lawyer.
Although recognizing the president's assertion that his power as commander in chief justifies warrantless surveillance, Mr. Smith called that case "weak" in light of the language and documented purpose of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which requires warrants.
Mr. Smith also wrote that the Congressional resolution authorizing military force against those who carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks "does not, in my view, justify warrantless electronic surveillance of United States persons in the United States."
"The president was correct in concluding that many of our laws were not adequate to deal with this new threat," Mr. Smith wrote. "He was wrong, however, to conclude that he is therefore free to follow the laws he agrees with and ignore those with which he disagrees."
March 8, 2006 (click here)
G.O.P. Senators Say Accord Is Set on Wiretapping
WASHINGTON, March 7 — Moving to tamp down Democratic calls for an investigation of the administration's domestic eavesdropping program, Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee said Tuesday that they had reached agreement with the White House on proposed bills to impose new oversight but allow wiretapping without warrants for up to 45 days....
...It is not clear whether all the Republican critics will back the deal. Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has said Congress should seek a court ruling on the legitimacy of the program in addition to new oversight.
In a separate Senate committee hearing on Tuesday, Mr. Specter said, "We're having quite a time in getting responses to questions as to what has happened with the electronic surveillance program."
He said he put the administration "on notice" he might seek to block its financing if Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales did not give more information.
Mr. Specter said in statement later that he hoped for a solution that would avoid resorting to such an extreme action.
April 1, 2005 (click here)
...Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the committee, insisted on a serious inquiry into the censure proposal. And Mr. Specter made no secret that he relished another chance to raise questions about the secret wiretapping program, run by the National Security Agency, noting that his committee had held four hearings on the subject.
"I thought they would attract more attention," he said.
Several Republicans argued that whatever the legal status of the spying program, it did not deserve punishment because, unlike Nixon, Mr. Bush had acted in good faith....
So, in a very short period of time, Bush and Cheney with the cooperation of Hayden, spy ILLEGALLY on the American people. There is FISA. It states clearly the conditions for wiretapping to prevent invasion of privacy. The Bush/Cheney administration deliberately breaks the law and then terrifies the USA into giving up it's own Constitution through a party so corrupt on it's intent to 'deal power and might' that there is no choice but for Americans to let their spine slip in accepting the criminality in the White House for the sake of their own security. This act, by Spector and the majority Republicans set the stage for a 'mind think' in the populous of the USA that is corrupt, biased and highly judgemental. Today the 'political mind speak' reverberates in words of justified corruption. When the Executive Branch should have been facing impeachment, they were met with a party willing to place the Constitution as a 'figure head' to what they now call democracy while taking away precious freedoms of the American people. It's outrageous and unconscionable. Arlen Spector's march into hell was amazing to witness.
March 6, 2006 (click here)
...Mr. Specter then loyally produced a bill that actually grants legal cover, retroactively, to the one spying program Mr. Bush has acknowledged. It also covers any other illegal wiretapping we don't know about — including, it appears, entire "programs" that could cover hundreds, thousands or millions of unknowing people.
Mr. Specter's bill at least offers the veneer of judicial oversight from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. A far more noxious proposal being floated by Senator Mike DeWine, Republican of Ohio, would entirely remove intelligence gathering related to terrorism from the law on spying, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act....
Spying on Americans (click here)
Sunday, December 18, 2005; Page B06
IN THE WAKE of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the New York Times reported last week, President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to conduct electronic surveillance of hundreds of U.S. citizens and residents suspected of contact with al Qaeda figures -- without warrants and outside the strictures of the law that governs national security searches and wiretaps. The rules here are not ambiguous. Generally speaking, the NSA has not been permitted to operate domestically. And the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requires that national security wiretaps be authorized by the secretive FISA court. "A person is guilty of an offense," the law reads, "if he intentionally . . . engages in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute" -- which appears, at least on its face, to be precisely what the president has authorized.
Mr. Bush, in his weekly radio address yesterday, defended his action, chastised the media for revealing it, and suggested both that Congress had justified this step by authorizing force against al Qaeda and that such spying was consistent with the "constitutional authority vested in me as commander in chief." But there is a reason the CIA and the NSA are not supposed to operate domestically: The tools of foreign intelligence are not consistent with a democratic society....
