[White House, Crimes and Misdemeanors]

Spying and Other Crimes.

Let us sift through the various elements of today's big news. First, the New York Times, which broke the news that Bush authorized the NSA to spy on American citizens:

Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.

The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval was a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches....

Mr. Bush's executive order allowing some warrantless eavesdropping on those inside the United States - including American citizens, permanent legal residents, tourists and other foreigners - is based on classified legal opinions that assert that the president has broad powers to order such searches, derived in part from the September 2001 Congressional resolution authorizing him to wage war on Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, according to the officials familiar with the N.S.A. operation.

These kinds of incursions on our Constitutional rights, sought by administrations who pine for power and justified to a population scared of its own shadow, are not Bush's invention. FDR jailed Americans because they were of Japanese descent. But rarely do they accomplish the intended goal, and almost always, they are quite quickly broadened to target citizens beyond the initial probe--Nixon pursuing political enemies. There's no suggestion in this article that Bush was, say, spying on citizens with blogs (not that I'm paranoid or anything). Of course, because the NSA is so secretive (it's jokingly called "No Such Agency"), and because this practice removes judicial oversight, we have no way of knowing.

Essentially, Bush is just asking us to trust him. Condi Rice, speaking on the Today show (this morning?), tried to emphasize this point. Katie Couric was questioning her specifically on the Times' report:

I can tell you that the President has always lived within the law. He has always said that he will do everything that he can to protect the American people from the kind of attack that we experienced on September 11th, but within the law and with due regard for the civil liberties of Americans. Because he takes absolutely seriously his constitutional responsibility both to defend Americans and to do it within the law.

Oh, really? So far, Bush has on at least four instances "stretched" the law (these are documented cases that I recall--surely there are more). The Iraq invasion justification was not, as Bush says, based on faulty intelligence, it was based on overt lies--one of which, the famous 16-word "Africa" claim in 2003's State of the Union, the White House admitted to. Because he cooked the intel, Bush invaded a non-threatening sovereign nation, a violation of international law. Once in Iraq, Bush was secretly pushing the bounds on torture, as the memo from his then-counsel Alberto Gonzales indicated (linking him to Abu Ghraib has proved more difficult). And finally, Bush also lied about what his prescription Medicare plan would cost until Denny Hastert had strong-armed (and possibly bribed) enough Congressmen in the dead of night to get it passed.

Beyond that, the executive branch has consistently sought to extend its powers, shutting out the judicial and legislative branches wherever possible. In this case, the Times' were unable to confirm that any members of Congress were aware of Bush's secret spying. The full extent of how Bush has managed the White House and how far he's gone in breaking citizens' Constitutional rights, is likely never to be known. Certainly with both house of Congress tied up by sycophantic Republicans, no investigations will happen for at least another year.

Fun times, huh?