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Bush lied.
Bush broke the law.
Dog bites man.
Yahoo News
By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 45 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee told
President Bush Wednesday that the White House broke the law by withholding information from the full congressional oversight committees about a new domestic surveillance program.
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In a letter to Bush, Rep. Jane Harman (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., said the National Security Act requires the heads of the various intelligence agencies to keep the entire House and Senate intelligence committees "fully and currently informed of the intelligence activities of the United States."
Only in the case of a highly classified covert action can the president choose to inform a narrower group of Congress members about his decision, Harman said. That action is defined in the law as an operation to influence political, economic or military conditions of another country.
"The NSA program does not qualify as a 'covert action,'" Harman wrote.
Bush and his senior national security aides have said that appropriate members of Congress were briefed more than a dozen times about the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance operations, which Bush first approved the month after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The highly classified sessions are known to include the "Gang of Eight," which is made up of the top Republican and Democrat in the House and Senate and on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.
"We believe that Congress was briefed appropriately," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Wednesday in response to Harman's letter.
Responding in writing to Harman, House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., said Harman had never previously raised concerns about the number of people briefed on the program.
"In the past, you have been fully supportive of this program and the practice by which we have overseen it," he wrote. "I find your position now completely incongruent."
Many details about the scope of electronic surveillance program remain unknown. However, Bush and his aides have asserted the monitoring — without court warrants — is narrowly targeted to eavesdrop on calls and e-mails of people who are inside the United States and suspected of communicating with al-Qaida or its affiliates.
Vice President
Cheney said Wednesday that the program helped to prevent possible terrorist attacks against the American people: "This program is critical to the national security of United States."
Democrats who have been briefed on the program have raised serious concerns about its legality, but not called for its immediate halt. Republicans and Democrats alike have called for hearings this year.
Last edited by RobinsontoDuncan; 01-05-2006 at 12:53 AM.
Bush lied.
Bush broke the law.
Dog bites man.
dubya/ head's blood is in the water. head pushed too far his agenda (of the unspoken justifcations for the war) of expanding exec power without limit.
There are just too many cons utional/legal scholars and judiciary who see head's secret surveillance as illegal.
The Repug WH has been 5 years of unmitigated disasters, lying, super secrecy, incompetence, destruction of the federal govt.
Impeach both of the mother ers.
============================
Surveillance Court Is Seeking Answers
Judges Were Unaware of Eavesdropping
By Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 5, 2006; A02
The members of a secret federal court that oversees government surveillance in espionage and terrorism cases are scheduled to receive a classified briefing Monday from top Justice Department and intelligence officials about a controversial warrantless-eavesdropping program, according to sources familiar with the arrangements.
Several judges on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court said they want to hear directly from administration officials why President Bush believed he had the authority to order, without the court's permission, wiretapping of some phone calls and e-mails after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Of serious concern to several judges is whether any information gleaned from intercepts by the National Security Agency was later used to gain their permission for wiretaps without the source being disclosed.
The court is made up of 11 judges who, on a rotating basis, hear government applications for surveillance warrants. But only the presiding judge, currently Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, was notified of the government eavesdropping program. One judge, James Robertson, who also serves on the federal bench in Washington, resigned his seat on the surveillance court in protest shortly after the wiretapping was revealed by the New York Times in mid-December.
Kollar-Kotelly began pressing for a closed government briefing for the remaining members of the court on Dec. 19, the day she learned of Robertson's concerns. Other judges wanted to know, as Robertson had, whether the administration had misled their court about its sources of information on possible terrorism suspects.
Kollar-Kotelly had privately raised concerns in 2004 about the risk that the government could taint the integrity of the court's work by using information it gained via wiretapping to obtain warrants from judges under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
On Friday, an attorney for Seifullah Chapman, one of the men convicted as part of the "Virginia jihad network," formally asked federal prosecutors in Virginia to determine whether warrantless NSA wiretaps were used to gain information about his client. Chapman, who is serving a 65-year sentence for conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist group, was the subject of a secret FISA warrant.
"My feeling is they are a very professional organization. They would be equally concerned that my client's rights are protected, and they'll want to find out themselves," said John Zwerling, Chapman's attorney.
Some judges who spoke on the condition of anonymity yesterday said they want to know whether warrants they signed were tainted by the NSA program. Depending on the answers, the judges said they could demand some proof that wiretap applications were not improperly obtained. Defense attorneys could have a valid argument to suppress evidence against their clients, some judges said, if information about them was gained through warrantless eavesdropping that was not revealed to the defense.
Yesterday, Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, sent a letter to Bush charging that the limited nature of congressional briefings on the monitoring program violated the National Security Act. The White House informed the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence oversight committees and the two ranking Democrats about the program.
The National Security Act requires the president to keep all members of the two committees fully informed of intelligence activities with the exception of those conducted covertly overseas. "In my view, failure to provide briefings to the full congressional intelligence committees is a continuing violation of the National Security Act," Harman wrote.
Staff writer Dafna Linzer contributed to this report.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Yall need bottle? Babby like warm milk??
Yea CIA is just a baby Milk plant.. not 007 agents that kill people with wires, poison and little pen guns...
Pussies should get the out of america... since ya'll ing pussies want to get rid of or disclose every classifed program.
Hope to see the person that leaked this get the lethal injection like they deserve.
Treason...
WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Yall need bottle? Babby like warm milk??
Pussies should get the out of america... since ya'll ing pussies want to get rid of or disclose every classifed program.Hope to see the person that leaked this get the lethal injection like they deserve.Treason...
I really cant believe there are people who can defend this... tell me is there a reason for this blind loyalty to bush?
What has he done right that has made him so endared to you?
There's no other answer they can give other than "You're questioning shows your against the troops."
They're lost, greedy, very ignorant, and selfish.
This is exactly the kind of rethoric that makes people like you look like idiots.
Rhetorically they look like idiots, but have a look around, this is a nation of idiots.
They sound good because to the average dumb, biggoted american they look like kick ass cowboys with cool boots.... and that makes them great leaders.
Oh, ok, well if u put it that way.
Last edited by SA210; 01-05-2006 at 09:47 AM.
Maybe Clinton didn't just get a head job after all, that would call for his impeachment. You know like searching YOUR home without warrants.
Artifices of impeachment
By Debra Saunders
Jan 5, 2006
The Left -- from The Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel to Newsweek's Jonathan Alter -- has pulled out the impeachment card and is brandishing it as the weapon that will drive George W. Bush from the White House. This could be more than talk. Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer is consulting with legal eagles as she explores the idea.
I must say, I am tickled at their efforts. I supported impeaching the perjury-prone President Clinton, but preferred censure to removing him from office. I also saw the damage to Republicans who pushed to chase Clinton out of office.
But the Bush-haters won't heed history, not when they see an opportunity to relive the glory days of Watergate: Republicans evil; Democrats uncorrupted; reporters respected. As Alter wrote after the story broke that President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on international calls in efforts to uncover possible agents of al Qaeda, "Similar abuse of power was part of the impeachment charge brought against Richard Nixon in 1974."
Angry leftists are so hysterical that they cannot distinguish between government agents eavesdropping on a president's political enemies, and the data mining of international phone calls in an earnest effort to thwart another Sept. 11 terrorist attack. They don't see that Bush, rather then trying to hide his role in the effort, signed off on the program more than 30 times.
Warrantless wiretaps? Victoria Toensing, a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Reagan administration, called CNN recently to note that the Clinton administration authorized the warrantless search of the house of CIA employee Aldrich Ames.
But the Dems didn't talk of impeachment then.
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley offers the best argument for impeachment -- not because he is persuasive, but because he is consistent. Turley said he supported the impeachment, conviction and removal of Clinton, and is advocating likewise for Bush, as the Bush wiretaps cons ute "a clear and undeniable crime." (He ignores lawyers and judges who see the issue either as far from settled, or come down in Bush's favor.)
Turley added that what the Bushies did "wasn't necessary." The administration could have won warrants from the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act court. Out of tens of thousands of eavesdropping requests since 1979, Alter reported, FISA rejected only four.
Toensing countered that it was necessary. FISA's turndown rate is low because government lawyers don't push for warrants unless they know they'll win.
Don't forget that the feds wouldn't even ask for a warrant to tap the laptop computer of Zacarias Moussaoui, the French citizen who later pleaded guilty to conspiring with the Sept. 11 hijackers. Turley says they should have sought a warrant. Toensing says officials knew they would lose because they could not establish Moussaoui was an "agent of a foreign power."
Turley also argues that if Bush had problems with the FISA law, then he should have gone to Congress to change it. But to do so, Toensing noted, officials would have had to reveal their surveillance methods.
Turley's best argument: If the president can cir vent FISA, then "he can cir vent any federal law."
Are we at war? I asked him. "That's a good question." Then, after deriding Congress for passing war resolutions -- not declarations of war -- Turley said, "As a cons utional matter, no."
As a practical matter, though, the answer is yes -- as any soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan can tell you. I respect Turley, but in the real world, it makes sense to monitor international communications to prevent another attack -- in America or against Americans abroad.
Instead, Washington delivers lowball partisan politics. Too many Democrats support Bush when polls support Bush -- the war, the Patriot Act -- then turn on his policies when they think they can get away with it. They don't think about the impact on U.S. soldiers on foreign soil.
This whole NSA story reinforces the fact that Bush is willing to be unpopular, risk the White House even, to get the job done, while too many of his Democratic critics will walk over anyone to stand up for their lack of principles.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Find this story at: http://www.townhall.com/opinion/colu...05/181093.html
So you like Clinton now?
Nope, still don't like him. Don't like his wife(?) either. Both are
crooked as a snake. Just point out that Clinton really did violate
a U.S. citizens rights, he authorized someone to go into his home
and search without a warrant. He also obtained 500 citizens, all
republicans, if I recall correctly, FBI files. Oh, by someone, who knows
who hired him, never found out did we. Also, wasn't it clinton who
cleared out the WH travel office of career employees and put his own
bunch in there?
So your boy, Clinton, never did anything wrong?
SA210=stuck under a bridge
your really do know how to prove a point. You really are stuck under
the bridge. You and boutons are going to run out of web space you
keep posting all the "pretty" pictures.
^^^^ and still I ask, what have you brought to the table that changes the fact that Bush is a liar and ppl are dead for it and he should be impeached?
Well, you're the idiots who impeached him for a blowjob -- seems you should've gotten your together a little better. Too bad for you.
Told you more than once. Bush isn't a liar. Lets use a little example of
a really terrible thing that happened day before yesterday. How come
the media ran with a story that 12 miners were alive. That was the best
information they had at the time and everyone-----repeat-----everyone
was saying they were alive. It was wrong information, but they acted on
it. Now apply that to Clinton/Bush administrations. All the information they
had, and everyone, including the European countries were saying, that
Saddam had WMD. It was logical, since, you know, he did use
WMD on more than one occasion. Also he would not let inspectors into
all areas to verify he didn't have them. Bush didn't lie. I know you wont
accept that fact, because it doesn't fit your little outlook on life, but it
is a fact. And before you forget it again we lost a few thousand people
in the WTC bombing. And Iraq was supporting terrorist, that is a fact,
whether you will admit it or not.
More attempted linkage.And before you forget it again we lost a few thousand people
in the WTC bombing.
Weak.
These are Dubyas words. Is he lying then or is he lying now? Was he for a court order for wiretaps before he was against it?
"Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so.
-George W. Bush
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