The Conspiracy to Violate FISA
DEPARTMENT
BY Scott Horton
PUBLISHED August 23, 2007
Critics of the Administration’s heavy-handed surveillance practices have suggested for some time that
the Administration could not be pulling off all of its warrantless and often clearly illegal techniques without the active collaboration of services providers. Indeed,
sources within the administration have now repeatedly suggested that
this is why Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card made their nighttime visit to the hospital bedside of John Ashcroft: to get his signature on a document intended to pacify service providers who were cooperating with the Administration in its surveillance programs and who recognized that in doing so they were almost certainly violating both FISA and several state statutes which make warrantless surveillance a serious felony. Several general counsel of service providers had pointed to the FISA provisions giving the attorney general authority to provide interim authorization and to the attorney general’s authority under the Judiciary Act of 1789 to craft opinions interpreting federal law. They wanted a document signed by the attorney general that said their cooperation with the Bush Administration was lawful and wouldn’t be subject to prosecution.
In a far-reaching interview with the El Paso Times,
Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell has confirmed a significant part of these suspicions. And he made a simply astonishing number of further statements—all reaching into areas which, up to this point, the Administration has insisted were highly classified national security information which could not be shared with the public, nor indeed with many members of Congress.
.......................
................ McConnell is pointing to the obvious vulnerability of
the collaborators in this scheme—telephone and internet service providers—whose ability to shield themselves with the state secrets doctrine is tenuous at best. much more at:
http://harpers.org/archive/2007/08/hbc-90000989
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