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Bush was denied wiretaps, bypassed them (FISA Court denied them in unprecedented numbers)
UPI ^ | Dec. 27, 2005 | UPI

Posted on 12/27/2005 10:47:23 AM PST by Pragmatic_View

WASHINGTON, Dec. 26 (UPI) -- U.S. President George Bush decided to skip seeking warrants for international wiretaps because the court was challenging him at an unprecedented rate.

A review of Justice Department reports to Congress by Hearst newspapers shows the 26-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court modified more wiretap requests from the Bush administration than the four previous presidential administrations combined.

The 11-judge court that authorizes FISA wiretaps modified only two search warrant orders out of the 13,102 applications approved over the first 22 years of the court's operation.

But since 2001, the judges have modified 179 of the 5,645 requests for surveillance by the Bush administration, the report said. A total of 173 of those court-ordered "substantive modifications" took place in 2003 and 2004. And, the judges also rejected or deferred at least six requests for warrants during those two years -- the first outright rejection of a wiretap request in the court's history.


TOPICS: Extended News; Front Page News; Government; News/Current Events; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: abovethelaw; alqaeda; fisa; gwot; heroic; homelandsecurity; nsa; patriotleak; spying; terrorattack; terrorism; wiretap; wiretaps; wot
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To: ez

Please see posts 298 & 300 re the President's authority to conduct warrantless searches.


301 posted on 12/27/2005 3:15:04 PM PST by Pragmatic_View
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To: ez
"By the same token, it seems that a warrant may not be needed for a "reasonable" search of Al Queda operatives if they are caught in the act of communicating enemy "signals.""

I'm sure you can find somebody that will argue that it is not reasonable, but I'm not. In cases where communications from abroad are tapped and incoming or outgoing calls to the U.S. and even to U.S. Persons are intercepted, to me that seems reasonable.

I have difficulty imagining a court denying a retroactive warrant in such a case. So why bypass such a system?
302 posted on 12/27/2005 3:15:53 PM PST by ndt
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To: Pragmatic_View
The purpose here is not to detect crime, or to build criminal prosecutions - areas where the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirements are applicable - but to identify and prevent armed attacks on American interests at home and abroad.

That's exactly right. Al Qaida cells inside the U.S. are a military incursion onto our soil. Their communications back to their overseas headquarters are fair game. It's really no different than if WWII German commandos had come ashore, and were calling back to Berlin. Enemy troops on our soil (as defined by those who contact and coordinate with enemy units abroad) are a military threat, and should be dealt with accordingly.

303 posted on 12/27/2005 3:16:53 PM PST by Steel Wolf (If the Founders had wanted the President to be spying on our phone calls, they would have said so!)
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To: ContemptofCourt
miss the days of a Clinton presidency, when FReepers challenged the extent of executive power

I guess the truth of the matter is that politics in the US today is nothing more than a competition for what kind of dictatorship we'll have - a left-wing one or a right-wing one.

304 posted on 12/27/2005 3:23:38 PM PST by garbanzo (Don't Let the Government Win)
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To: Wasanother

http://newsbusters.org/node/3291

It is quite telling to note, that the New York Times and all the mainstream media that cried out thousands upon thousands of times demanding the identity of the person who leaked the identity of Valerie Plame are silent on the same demand for identity disclosure in the N.S.A. leak story.


305 posted on 12/27/2005 3:25:21 PM PST by TheForceOfOne
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To: ndt

"So why bypass such a system?"

===

Are you for real?!

This entire thread started out with the article, which pointed out that the FISA court denied the warrants in quite a number of cases.

As the article, excerpt of which I posted in posts 298 & 300, said, the President HAS the authority in the first place, he doesn't need to go through FISA.


306 posted on 12/27/2005 3:26:17 PM PST by Pragmatic_View
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To: Pragmatic_View
Reading through that article it's very clear that the FISA court members are totally oblivious to the fact that the nation has been at war since 9/11/2001.

I thought the court was supposed to be "secret", not "isolated".

307 posted on 12/27/2005 3:27:09 PM PST by muawiyah (-)
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To: ContemptofCourt
There's a war on.

Your response sounds just like you're shooting for a position on the FISA court.

308 posted on 12/27/2005 3:29:39 PM PST by muawiyah (-)
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To: garbanzo

"US today is nothing more than a competition for what kind of dictatorship we'll have - a left-wing one or a right-wing one."

===

There you go leaping to totally unwarranted conclusions.

The president HAS the authority to defend us against the enemy. It's WAR, in case you missed 9-11-01.

Read this article written by two attorneys who seerved in the Justice Dept.

Unwarranted complaints
David B. Rivkin and Lee A. Casey The New York Times

http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2005/12/27/opinion/edcasey.php


The Constitution's framers did not vest absolute power in any branch of the federal government, including the courts, but they did create a strong executive and equipped the office with sufficient authority to act energetically to defend the national interest in wartime. That is what President Bush has done, and nothing more.


309 posted on 12/27/2005 3:30:10 PM PST by Pragmatic_View
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To: Pragmatic_View
"This entire thread started out with the article, which pointed out that the FISA court denied the warrants in quite a number of cases."

There is more than one judge involved and historically they have agreed with the requests.

Why were these requests denied? The answer most here are coming up with is that the judge was a liberal activist, the other possibly is that the requests were not reasonable.
310 posted on 12/27/2005 3:31:49 PM PST by ndt
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To: ndt

There hasn't been a single allegation that the requests were not reasonable.


311 posted on 12/27/2005 3:33:13 PM PST by Pragmatic_View
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To: Pragmatic_View

"There hasn't been a single allegation that the requests were not reasonable."

That is exactly what denial of a warrant request is.


312 posted on 12/27/2005 3:34:14 PM PST by ndt
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To: TheForceOfOne
Exactly
If the Slimes are going to make the notion that the President Broke the law then they should have no problem giving the name of the person(s) who told them of this program because if they are correct then the source(s) fall under Whistle-Blowers Status, just like that one that gave Monica Lewinsky away, but if they are wrong, which they are, that person hangs which would give them another headline. Win-Win for the Slimes just for giving the names. I also want to know the names of the people who's rights were "violated".
313 posted on 12/27/2005 3:34:40 PM PST by Wasanother (Terrorist come in many forms but all are RATS.)
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To: ndt
In cases where communications from abroad are tapped and incoming or outgoing calls to the U.S. and even to U.S. Persons are intercepted, to me that seems reasonable.

I have difficulty imagining a court denying a retroactive warrant in such a case. So why bypass such a system?

Because it has been politicized.

314 posted on 12/27/2005 3:35:07 PM PST by ez ("Abashed the devil stood and felt how awful goodness is." - Milton)
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To: ndt
They can change law to give him powers he might not otherwise have, but they can not give a "blank check" to bypass constitutional limits.

Do people here really understand what happened to the Weimar Republic? That even in emergency situations you can't give unlimited power to the executive for indefinite period of time? I guess I understand the power of fear in shaping emotions, but people really should look at history, especially the collapse of the Roman Republic or the Weimar Republic.

315 posted on 12/27/2005 3:36:08 PM PST by garbanzo (Don't Let the Government Win)
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To: Digger; Royal Wulff
Royal Wulff: We always must remember that it's Bush today, Hillary tomorrow. Do you for one moment think that The Hildabeast will obey the law?
Did Hillary hire Craig Livingstone?
Did Hillary order the prosecution of the head of the White House Travel Office?

We don't know that she did, but she's a suspect - and we know that she didn't substantively protest either. There is no reason to suppose that Hillary would confine herself to what she could reasonably expect courts to finally vindicate, any more than x42 did.


316 posted on 12/27/2005 3:36:58 PM PST by conservatism_IS_compassion (The idea around which liberalism coheres is that NOTHING actually matters but PR.)
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To: ndt

The FISA may have thought it's not reasonable, that doesn't mean it wasn't.


317 posted on 12/27/2005 3:36:59 PM PST by Pragmatic_View
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To: garbanzo

"Do people here really understand what happened to the Weimar Republic? That even in emergency situations you can't give unlimited power to the executive for indefinite period of time?"

Not a popular point of view these days.


318 posted on 12/27/2005 3:38:12 PM PST by ndt
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To: All
The Paranoid Style in American Liberalism by Bill Kristol

On Monday, December 19, General Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency and now deputy director of national intelligence, briefed journalists. The back-and-forth included this exchange:

Reporter: Have you identified armed enemy combatants, through this program, in the United States?

Gen. Hayden: This program has been successful in detecting and preventing attacks inside the United States.

Reporter: General Hayden, I know you're not going to talk about specifics about that, and you say it's been successful. But would it have been as successful-can you unequivocally say that something has been stopped or there was an imminent attack or you got information through this that you could not have gotten through going to the court?

Gen. Hayden: I can say unequivocally, all right, that we have got information through this program that would not otherwise have been available.

319 posted on 12/27/2005 3:39:31 PM PST by Pragmatic_View
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To: garbanzo

And do people understand what a NUKE can do to a US city and the country?

I guess you don't think we should prevent it, if the only way is by wiretapping conversations of terrorists inside the US, right?


320 posted on 12/27/2005 3:41:40 PM PST by Pragmatic_View
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