....And if the terrorists attacked on 9/11, it was perfectly in order that the Bush administration took “decisive measures” of similar kind. Shamefully, far too many American politicians exhibited sheepish submissiveness, when the White House PR machine pulled out all stops to exploit the trauma brought on by the attacks of 9/11.
Now we have learned that it is even worse. The eavesdropping abuses began as soon as the Bush administration came into office - well before 9/11.
In recent days, thanks to an enterprising reporter for the Rocky Mountain News, we find that the president, vice president, and CIA director-not to mention the credulous crowd around Nancy Pelosi-have all been regurgitating a king-sized whopper aimed at providing “justification” for the NSA program. Administration PR consultants made this easy by inventing a clever-if retroactive-label to the program: The “Terrorist Surveillance Program.” Nothing to fear, folks, unless you’re telephoning or emailing Osama bin-Laden.
Whopper? Well yes. It turns out that seven months before the threat of terrorism garnered much White House attention (despite the best efforts of then-counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke to install it on everyone’s screen-saver, so to speak), the administration instructed NSA to suborn American telecommunications companies to spy illegally on Americans.
Qt the time, the general counsel of Qwest Communications advised management that what NSA was suggesting was illegal. And to his credit, the then-head of the company stuck to a firm “No,” unless some way were found to perform legally what NSA wanted done. Qwest’s rivals, though, took their cue from the White House, adopted a flexible at ude toward the law, and got the business. They are now being sued. Lawsuit filings claim that, seven months before 9/11, AT&T “began development of a center for monitoring long distance calls and Internet transmissions and other digital information for the exclusive use of the NSA.”
Adding insult to injury, draft legislation now being pushed by the White House would hold AT&T and other collaborators harmless for playing fast and loose with our right to privacy in order to enhance their bottom line. For its principled but, in government eyes, recalcitrant at ude, Qwest apparently lost out on lucrative government contracts.
Yes, Before 9/11
These illegal operations, including those prior to 9/11, were enabled by Michael Hayden, then head of NSA and now director of CIA. Hayden has been out in front “justifying” illegal eavesdropping by what happened on 9/11. Did he know the illegal activities started before then? Of course; he was ordered to orchestrate them.
Did he know they were illegal? Another no-brainer. While director of NSA, Hayden had emphasized what had long been known as NSA’s First Commandment: “Thou Shalt Not Eavesdrop on Americans.”
But in testimony at his confirmation hearings, Hayden said that in the wake of 9/11 he “could not not do” what the president wanted him to do with the “Terrorist Surveillance Program.” The hypocrisy is well nigh unbearable.
Martinet
When the program was revealed in the press in late 2005, Hayden agreed to play point man with smoke and mirrors. (Small wonder that the White House later deemed him the perfect man to head the CIA.)
Nevertheless, a whiff of conscience showed through his nomination hearing, though, when he flubbed the answer to a soft-pitch from administration loyalist, Sen. Kit Bond, R-Missouri:
“Did you believe that your primary responsibility as director of NSA was to execute a program that your NSA lawyers, the Justice Department lawyers, and White House officials all told you was legal and that you were ordered to carry it out by the president of the United States?”
Instead of the simple “Yes” that was in the script, Hayden paused and spoke rather poignantly-and revealingly: “I had to make this personal decision in early October 2001, and it was a personal decision…I could not not do this.”
Why should it be such an enormous personal decision whether or not to obey a White House order? No one asked Hayden, but it requires no particular acuity to figure it out. This is a military officer who, like the rest of us, had sworn to defend the Cons ution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; a military man well aware of the strictures against obeying an unlawful order.
President George W. Bush assured us on Jan. 23, 2006, “I had all kinds of lawyers review the process.” Right. The same ones, no doubt, who were busy devising ways to “legalize” torture and indefinite detention without due process.
No American, save perhaps retired Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, who as NSA director was present at the creation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (and who has said the Hayden-approved activities are illegal), knew FISA better than Hayden. Nonetheless, Hayden conceded that he did not even require a written legal opinion to satisfy himself that the surveillance program, to be implemented without warrant and without adequate consultation in Congress, could pass the smell test.
Small wonder that one of Hayden’s predecessors as NSA director, upon learning what Hayden had agreed to do, said angrily, “He ought to be court-martialed.”
And who was the NSA general counsel at the time? Robert L. Deitz, who is now a “trusted aide” to CIA Director Hayden. Deitz, we learn from recent news reports, has just been launched on an investigation of the CIA Inspector General-yes, that’s right, an investigation of CIA’s statutory Inspector General John Helgerson, who apparently does not fit in with the elastic ethos Hayden and his immediate predecessors brought to the agency.
It appears Helgerson is not a “team player,” resisting, as he has, the reintroduction of the Nixonian dictum “It’s legal if the president says it’s legal.” He has been taking his job too seriously for Hayden’s taste-conducting honest investigations into abuses like torture. Fortunately for Helgerson and the rest of us, Hayden cannot fire him, which is handy proof of the wisdom of having statutory inspectors general.
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