Posted on 12/26/2005 8:29:41 AM PST by kellynla
The New York Times' Christmas gift -- sorry, holiday gift -- to the nation's political dialogue was its Dec. 16 story reporting that the National Security Agency has been intercepting telephone conversations between terrorism suspects abroad and U.S. citizens or legal residents in the United States.
What the Times didn't bother telling its readers is that this practice is far from new and is entirely legal. Instead, the unspoken subtext of the story was that this was likely an illegal and certainly a very scary invasion of Americans' rights.
Let's put the issue very simply. The president has the power as commander in chief under the Constitution to intercept and monitor the communications of America's enemies. Indeed, it would be a very weird interpretation of the Constitution to say that the commander in chief could order U.S. forces to kill America's enemies but not to wiretap -- or, more likely these days, electronically intercept -- their communications. Presidents have asserted and exercised this power repeatedly and consistently over the last quarter-century.
To be sure, federal courts have ruled that the Fourth Amendment's bar of "unreasonable" searches and seizures limits the president's power to intercept communications without obtaining a warrant. But that doesn't apply to foreign intercepts, as the Supreme Court made clear in a 1972 case, writing, "The instant case requires no judgment on the scope of the president's surveillance power with respect to the activities of foreign powers, within or without this country." The federal courts of appeals for the 5th, 3rd, 9th and 4th Circuits, in cases decided in 1970, 1974, 1977 and 1980, took the same view. In 2002, the special federal court superintending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act wrote, "The Truong court, as did all the other courts to have decided the issue, held that the president did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information. ... We take for granted that the president does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the president's constitutional power."
Warrantless intercepts of the communications of foreign powers were undertaken as long ago as 1979, by the Carter administration. In 1994, Bill Clinton's deputy attorney general, Jamie Gorelick, testified to Congress, "The Department of Justice believes, and the case law supports, that the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes."
In the Dec. 15 Chicago Tribune, John Schmidt, associate attorney general in the Clinton administration, laid it out cold: "President Bush's post-Sept. 11, 2001, authorization to the National Security Agency to carry out electronic surveillance into private phone calls and e-mails is consistent with court decisions and with the positions of the Justice Department under prior presidents."
"News stories" in the Times and other newspapers and many national newscasts have largely ignored this legal record. Instead, they are tinged with a note of hysteria and the suggestion that fundamental freedoms have been violated by the NSA intercepts.
Earlier this month, a Newsweek cover story depicted George W. Bush as living inside a bubble, isolated from knowledge of the real world. Many of the news stories about the NSA intercepts show that it is mainstream media that are living inside a bubble, carefully insulating themselves and their readers and viewers from knowledge of applicable law and recent historical precedent, determined to pursue an agenda of undermining the Bush administration regardless of any damage to national security.
And damage there almost certainly would be were the program to be ended, as many Democrats and many in the mainstream media would like. Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of NSA and now deputy national intelligence director, has come forward to say, "This program has been successful in detecting and preventing attacks inside the United States."
The Constitution, Justice Robert Jackson famously wrote, should not be interpreted in a way that makes it "a suicide pact." The notion that terrorists' privacy must be respected when they place a cell-phone call to someone in the United States is in the nature of a suicide pact. The Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches and seizures in the United States should not be stretched into a ban on interceptions of communications from America's enemies abroad.
The mainstream media, inside their left-wing bubble, evidently thinks that there is not much in the way of danger. They should take a trip to Ground Zero, to the Sept. 11 memorial at the Pentagon, to Shanksville, Pa., where the heroes of United flight 93 prevented the terrorists from hitting their target in Washington."
BTTT
The MSM, in typical fashion, pretend FISA (authorizing the surveillance) doesn't exist. They aren't talking about it, they're sticking their fingers in their ears and saying, "La da da, I don't hear you!"
This is why this crusade will be yet another exercise in futility in the media's ongoing war against Bush. They just don't have the facts, and eventually the public will learn the truth that warrants are not required in all instances and that the administration followed the law.
THAT is a great tagline!
Excellant post. It would be very tragic if these mindless terrorists planted explosives at the NY Times and sent the whole damn place up in a fireball. Who would we then have to protect the constitutional rights of the enemys of our country and to keep the world safe for blood crazed tyrants?
I don't know if the Bush administration is that smart or the LSM & the liberals are just dumb but it seems to me that the administration lays these traps out and damn if the Lefties don't step into them evvvvvvvery time. LOL
and the 'Rats wonder why they keep losing elections...
I would like the Senators,Representatives,news media and others who are denigrating George Bush and his administration over this supposed illegal spying to come forward and show actual harm to one single real life person. I know there are families of close to 3000 casualties of 9/11 who can show harm from the terrorists acts that might have been stopped if these measures had been in place before that attack. The loss of a civil liberty of this type pales in comparison to the loss of lives on that horrible day.
BUMP! The New York Times and the Democrat Party have not only failed to gain any traction from their latest 'smear Bush' propaganda tale, but the opposite has panned out - - Bush's numbers are going UP!
LMAO! The dying socialist "mainstream" press is like the Keystone Cops.
(Denny Crane: "I Don't Want To Socialize With A Pinko Liberal Democrat Commie. Say What You Like About Republicans. We Stick To Our Convictions. Even When We Know We're Dead Wrong.")
"show actual harm to one single real life person"
the Lefties won't because they CAN'T!
there hasn't been one, NOT ONE reported violation!
Sooner or later the Lefties and the LSM will learn that we are at war!
wouldn't it be sweet if Ruppert or Mel Gibson were to buy the NYT & the LAT!!!
the Lefties would have a combined cardiac arrest! LOL
BTTT
After the war is over, you mean.:-) They are as dense as bricks!
I say: Shun the Times
A boycott means you stop buying it. A shunning means you even stop talking about it.
most thinking people now know this.
Networks and print media companies are sliding towards extinction.
News and advertising on the internet.....and classified sales on auction webs have been draining the lifeblood from the old institutions.
I have a theory. The NYT alerted the WH a year ago about the NSA leak. The DOJ sought and obtained warrants to wiretap the two authors of the story since DOJ had evidence a law had been violated. During that year of surveillance, DOJ discovered Judge Robertson of the FISA court was the source of the leak. After the story was printed, Judge Robertson received a target letter from the DOJ for disclosing classified info to an unauthorized person. That’s why Robertson resigned without an official reason last week.
The Democrat Hysterics in the US Congress, along with their attack dog stoodges in the Dinasour Media, should be required to start each day watching the videos of American Civilians jumping to their deaths from the Twin Towers on 9-11-01
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