Time Was Not an Issue
December 21st, 2005
Okay, I’m still hearing people in the media buying into Bush’s lie about expediency being a reason for the secret illegal eavesdropping. Let’s get this straight: the FISA courts were not in any way, shape or form slowing down the ability of the intelligence community to get wiretaps. The administration had full authority to issue a wiretap immediately, and then take up to three days to apply to the FISA court retroactively.
Amazing that this information has been out there for days now, and very prominently, and yet journalists are still buying into Bush’s lies, repeating them to the public.
I think the problem w/ fisa is you need to show some sign that the person in question is connected to terrorism. And w/ this other nsa (cell phone) monitoring thing, we did not have that. For example, lets say someone from Syria is learning how to fly in the usa. Perhaps his cell phone was monitored a bit. Perhaps he would not have passed fisa.
We monitor cell phones all over the world and don’t think anything of it. Then we monitor one cell phone conversation in the usa and it is a big deal.
FISA only rarely denied a warrant–they approved 99.98% of all requests for eavesdropping, meaning that they were not in the least restrictive. Your example would have been easily cleared by them–which shows what kind of unjustified wiretaps the Bush administration was likely trying to get.
As for wiretaps inside and outside the U.S., that’s the legal distinction we make. We can spy on other countries, but not on our own people.
It seems obvious to me, the reason they don’t want to file for a warrant because they would have to say justify that, and that might mean letting the whole world know that there spying on people strictly for political reasons, or perhaps even reasons more petty than that.
The idea that Bush ask us that we trust him after a life time of lies and faux pas and failures is simply breath taking in its ineptitude.