Larry Johnson drives the stake into the vampires heart ...

[understandinglife]

Roving Wiretaps Capture a Terrorist

by Larry C. Johnson on December 19, 2005

The claim by President Bush that he needs to ignore the FISA process in order to nab terrorists shows that he either does not understand that this law has been used to actually capture a terrorist based on a phone call from a foreign country or he is hiding something. In 1989 an Avianca plane exploded in mid-air in Colombia. The culprit? A henchman of Pablo Escobar, Dandeny Munoz-Mosquera. Mosquera was arrested in New York City on 21 September 1991. Here is the press account, which appeared in the Washington Post on 27 September 1991:

Federal authorities reported the arrest in Queens of , described as a leading assassin, and said they stopped a plot to kill a "very important target," possibly a world leader attending the U.N. General Assembly meeting.

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So, President Bush is wrong. You don't have to break a law to get quick action. Not only can you catch terrorists using FISA, we have caught terrorists. The real story behind the unauthorized wiretaps authorized by President Bush probably concerns the source of the info. It appears the most likely explanation is that the Bush Administration did not want to have to tell a Federal judge that they were using information obtained from interrogations that violated the spirit and the letter of the Geneva Conventions. Instead of protecting the nation the President may be covering his derrier.

More at the link:

http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2005/12/roving_wiretaps.html#more

Mr. Bush is not merely wrong, he is a self-confessed multi-count felon, multi-count violator of the 4th Amendment, and obviously should be charged with violations of his Oath of Office (as should Cheney).


Peace.

[kentuck]

1. Yep, that's the heart of the issue...

There is no reason he could not have used the FISA courts. They would not have slowed him down at the least. He simply chose to break the law.

[understandinglife]

2. Agreed. And, one small historical detail, and that is that every record ..

... we have, and they are considerable, shows the FISA court to move with alacrity and have demonstrated minimal reluctance to provide warrant -- of course, that's because the cases they have been shown have been just.


Peace.

[mod mom]

3. Dems need to make the case that we are not against wiretaps, when legally

pursued to fight terrorists, it just must be done legally through the courts.

[understandinglife]

5. FISA works, but, No One In America Is Above The Law. -- That's all ...

... they need to say, over and over and over again.

Alter's Newsweek report, see comment # 4, ends it for Bush (and Cheney and any minion who had anything to do with the illegal surveillance).


Peace.

[NewJeffCT]

6. you even have 72 hours after the wiretap

to notify the courts.

I think the Ctr. for American Progress had like over 15,000 approvals of wiretaps through FISA, with 0 not approved. zip, none, nil.

The only reason not to go through FISA is if you were scared that you would be turned down for the first time in the history of FISA - and this is with Republicans dominating most of the judiciary.

[understandinglife]

8. Yes:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=5630443&mesg_id=5630443

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=5621982&mesg_id=5624990


Peace.

[understandinglife]

4. Newsweek: "No wonder Bush was so desperate that The New York Times not

... publish its story on the National Security Agency eavesdropping on American citizens without a warrant, in what lawyers outside the administration say is a clear violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. I learned this week that on December 6, Bush summoned Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and executive editor Bill Keller to the Oval Office in a futile attempt to talk them out of running the story. The Times will not comment on the meeting, but one can only imagine the president’s desperation.

The problem was not that the disclosures would compromise national security, as Bush claimed at his press conference. His comparison to the damaging pre-9/11 revelation of Osama bin Laden’s use of a satellite phone, which caused bin Laden to change tactics, is fallacious; any Americans with ties to Muslim extremists—in fact, all American Muslims, period—have long since suspected that the U.S. government might be listening in to their conversations. Bush claimed that “the fact that we are discussing this program is helping the enemy.” But there is simply no evidence, or even reasonable presumption, that this is so. And rather than the leaking being a “shameful act,” it was the work of a patriot inside the government who was trying to stop a presidential power grab.

No, Bush was desperate to keep the Times from running this important story — which the paper had already inexplicably held for a year — because he knew that it would reveal him as a law-breaker. He insists he had “legal authority derived from the Constitution and congressional resolution authorizing force.” But the Constitution explicitly requires the president to obey the law. And the post 9/11 congressional resolution authorizing “all necessary force” in fighting terrorism was made in clear reference to military intervention. It did not scrap the Constitution and allow the president to do whatever he pleased in any area in the name of fighting terrorism.

<clip>

More at the link to Mr. Alter's damning account:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10536559/site/newsweek

Any doubt, anyone may have had, .... bye, bye ...


Peace.

[shanti]

11. "...for over a year"

hmmm, right about election time, eh? :mad:

[schrodingers_cat]

20. Another important question that I haven't seen asked yet....

How the hell did the president know that the story was going to be published, with enough warning to call these people, fly them over to the White House, and demand that they not? What was their 'advanced warning system'?
Damn presstitutes, caught in bed at the white house once again.....

[understandinglife]

7. AP/Raw Story: "You look at these documents," said Ann Beeson, associate

... legal director for the ACLU, "and you think wow, we have really returned to the days of J. Edgar Hoover."

Read more about the FBI surveillance of vegans, Catholics, llama fur protests, ....

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/FBI_watched_array_of_environmental_animal_1219.html

Just remember:

The HTLingual program ultimately opened the mail of Bella Abzug, Linus Pauling, John Steinbeck, Martin Luther King, Edward Albee and Hubert Humphrey: hardly potential Soviet agents. Indeed, the program did not identify a single Soviet agent in its twenty-one year run.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=5638345&mesg_id=5639299

Not one ....


Peace.

[randyconspiracybuff]

16. Don't You Know Vegans...

constitute a threat to the National Security of the meat industry?

[understandinglife]

9. WaPo: "The belated and limited awakening we are seeing in Congress is the

... consequence of many Americans realizing that the administration has gone too far.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/19/AR2005121901040.html

Got that correct, WaPo editors. Too bad you and the NYT haven't been doing your job any better than Congress has been doing its -- in fact, you've all been such efficient propagandists for Bush and the neoconsters, it's amazing that "many Americans" have been able to find the truth on their own.


Peace.

[roody]

10. Has Shrub considered reading

his daily briefings to protect us from terrorism?

[buddysmellgood]

12. Or mabye questioning the Bin Laden family before flying them out of the

country. Hell, he could have left them here and wiretapped them.

[understandinglife]

14. Sure could have ... wonder why he didn't .....

So many crimes, so much to do -- lawyers will be working these cases for the next couple of decades....


Peace.

[understandinglife]

13. ReddHedd: "Unfortunately for Bushie, life doesn't work that way here in

... in our democracy. (If only he'd been born king...) Living in a nation of laws does have its advantages -- especially when those who interpret those laws, even those who have tended to side with the Administration the last few years, finally reach a stage when they can't even force that bile down any longer.

Alan Dershowitz reached the tipping point today on CNN's Situation Room, and Crooks and Liars has the video.

I think the President broke the law....It's not enough for the President to get his lawyers to tell him what he wants to hear. That's not the kind of objective legal advice that the Constitution requires for this kind of action to be undertaken.

Dershowitz further called for Congressional hearings and an inquiry into the power of the President.

As if that weren't bad enough, Jonathon Turley, usual Republican go-to guy, pissed off Bill O'Reilly by suggesting that the President committed a crime. (Crooks and Liars has this video as well.)

I don't consider this a close case at all....This operation was based on a federal crime.

Much more of No President Is Above The Law at the link, including links to several other reports:

http://firedoglake.blogspot.com/2005_12_01_firedoglake_archive.html#113505490286434581

Onward to justice ....


Peace.

[bleever]

15. It's always amazed me: No Patriot Act triumphs to trumpet. No stories of:

We Saved you! We used the Patriot Act and Saved You!

Because with PR their lifeblood, they'd be unable to resist capitalizing on it. It would be the kind of Holy Grail they'd planned on having many times over, and recent history suggests they might not even have been dissuaded by concerns about national security and legal niceties stemming from the Constitution.

Their biggest trophy so far is Jose Padilla, who was apprehended and has been held based on information gathered before the Patriot Act was authorized. Even that case has been a dry well for them.

[BamaBecky]

17. Thank You UL - you always come up with the "good stuff"

[myrna minx]

18. Gee, back in 1998, it was all about "the rule of law" wasn't it?

Uh, unless your a republican, that is. :grr: I hope someone does a flash that has the side by side of bu$h saying that he:
http://www.buzzflash.com/analysis/2002/10/29_Dictator.html
If Only I Were A Dictator, by George W. Bush

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

Yes, George W. Bush has stated he'd prefer to be a dictator at least three times, according to BuzzFlash.com:

* * *

"You don't get everything you want. A dictatorship would be a lot easier." Describing what it's like to be governor of Texas.
(Governing Magazine 7/98)

-- From Paul Begala's "Is Our Children Learning?"

"I told all four that there are going to be some times where we don't agree with each other, but that's OK. If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator," Bush joked.

-- CNN.com, December 18, 2000

"A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it, " said.

-- Business Week, July 30, 2001


to today:
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=2435382005
I'm no dictator, Bush insists

[leveymg]

19. Add up the charges: torture, warrantless wiretaps, lying to Congress

(obstruction of justice), perjury, kidnapping, reckless endangerment, negligent homicide, bid-rigging, influence-peddling, election law violations, revealing the identity of covert intelligent agents, espionage . . . and I could go on.

No wonder this Administration doesn't want to go in front of federal judges.