Deceit over spying -- prelude to long-term lame-duck president

[realFedUp]

(this is from last month but still relevant, from
Republican Pete McCloskey)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/12/23/EDGU6GBNV51.DTL&hw=McCloskey&sn=003&sc=814

Deceit over spying -- prelude to long-term lame-duck president
- Pete McCloskey, Lewis H. Butler
Friday, December 23, 2005

It is always a sad thing for the nation when a president is caught telling less than the full truth.

In the late 1950s, a CIA U-2 spy plane piloted by Gary Powers at 50,000 feet was shot down over the Soviet Union. President Eisenhower, believing that Powers could not have survived, advised the world that it was a "routine weather flight which had strayed by mistake." The Russians then produced a live and penitent Powers. We were embarrassed before the world, but worse, we had to come to grips with the reality that our president had lied to us.

The resulting loss of faith in our leadership has continued to the present day. Faith in our own government and its truthfulness is a key ingredient in our strength as a nation.

So it was when the New York Times disclosed last week President Bush's deliberate evasion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The president's half-truths in defense of his actions will have perhaps a greater long-range impact on public faith and the national security than his deliberate violation of the act, which had been carefully crafted by Congress to create a special secret court where the administration could go to obtain secret warrants for wiretaps against persons deemed national-security threats. In an emergency, the act allowed the president to perform the wiretaps without a warrant so long as he advised the court within three days thereafter. Thousands of warrants have been duly issued by the court, and few requests were denied.

continued

Pete McCloskey represented the Peninsula as a Republican Congressman from 1967 to 1982. Lewis H. Butler was formerly secretary for policy in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare in the Nixon administration. They are co-chairmen of the Revolt of the Elders Coalition, which examines and publishes the actions and views of the Republican leadership in Congress.