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December 19, 2005
One Question
Over at The Washington Post's Early Warning, William Arkin sniffs:
Come on. The government is not just repeating the targeting of political opponents a la J. Edgar Hoover or Richard Nixon. It is not picking out a Seymour Hersh or a Cindy Sheehan to find their links to foreign influences nor seeking to ruin their lives by developing incriminating evidence on them.
Okay. So uh, why couldn't the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Courts be told about the wiretapping then?
See, the problem for Arkin, and Powerline, and all the other apologists is that "the President's program" (and yes, it was really called that) is distinguished from normal intelligence operations by one simple fact: Bush's unilateral decision to deny disclosure to classified oversight courts. Courts that exist solely to verify that the president is going after the Mohammad Atta's rather than the Cindy Sheehan's of the world. So Arkin, if he wants to uphold this argument, needs to find an answer to this question: why did Bush decide that the historically deferential Federal Intelligence Surveillance Courts would prove fatally harmful to his activities?
December 19, 2005 | Permalink
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Comments
I was going to say "How does he know," but his first commenter beat me to it. Instead the nut graf seems to be:
The New York Times and the government may not want to say the obvious, that by and large, it is Muslims in America who are being monitored in the 9/11 Order. It is not the liberal or the literary in the back of the New York City taxicab that is the target.
And, WTF? Can't liberals or literaries also be Muslim?
Now Arkin seems to get it on one level, that this is destroying the country in order to save it. But it'd be nice if he also acknowledged that this could easily turn into surveillance of political opponents, if it hasn't yet (and the Pentagon has already been tracking anti-war groups).
Posted by: Matt Weiner | Dec 19, 2005 10:43:30 AM
and the Pentagon has already been tracking anti-war groups
...as discussed in the previous two posts on his blog.
Posted by: Matt Weiner | Dec 19, 2005 10:44:56 AM
why did Bush decide that the historically deferential Federal Intelligence Surveillance Courts would prove fatally harmful to his activities?
Especially since FISA courts can retroactively authorize surveillance.
Posted by: TJ | Dec 19, 2005 11:47:06 AM
None of this makes a damn bit of sense, and it's frustrating that the idiot press isn't going after Bush more forcefully.
His latest talking point is the need to "move quickly." That makes no sense, given that investigators can act IMMEDIATELY to wiretap and get warrants issued retroactively.
If the law enables investigators to act immediately, then it makes no sense for the president to say he needed the authority to act immediately. Because, um, he had the authority to act immediately.
Idiot press.
Posted by: theorajones | Dec 19, 2005 12:20:03 PM
Arkin KNOWS that the gov't is spying on political opponents. According to the Post, he's reported on it:
The Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, began as a small policy-coordination office but has grown to encompass nine directorates and a staff exceeding 1,000. The agency's Talon database, collecting unconfirmed reports of suspicious activity from military bases and organizations around the country, has included "threat reports" of peaceful civilian protests and demonstrations…
Pentagon officials said this month they had ordered a review of the program after disclosures, in The Post, NBC News and the washingtonpost.com Weblog of WILLIAM M. ARKIN, that CIFA compiled information about U.S. citizens engaging in constitutionally protected political activity such as protests against military recruiting…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/17/AR2005121701233.html
So wtf is going on with him?
Posted by: JR | Dec 19, 2005 12:23:20 PM
Even if the WH was pure as the driven snow (as their apologists believe), wouldn't the WH's apologists (Powerline, particularly) be a bit concerned with this program becoming legal in a Hillary Admin? Remember, this is a war without a clear end, with the Exec. able to define -- by themselves -- who and what and when they monitor, with no obligation to tell anyone the specifics.
You know, for all the talk we're going to hear about original intent in the Alito hearings, ask yourself:
isn't unilateral, unfettered power by the Executive precisely what the Constitution was supposed to prevent? Further, how can one support *this* and still believe in "original intent" with a straight face.
I don't think there's any pretense of intellectual consistency amongst some on the right. It's just talking points for political hacks.
Posted by: Chris R | Dec 19, 2005 1:08:03 PM
Arkin is making a substantially more liberal point than (a) you all are acknowledging, and (b) I've seen anyone in the blogosphere make. It's wrong even if it doesn't affect you and isn't likely to affect you. It's wrong even if it only affects the taxi drivers from foreign lands. It's wrong even if it costs us American lives. The appropriate response to the strong national security claims made by the Administration is to call bullshit:
The right answer is to challenge the presumption of a terrorist threat that is so potentially destructive that it demands we destroy ourselves to fight it. Terrorists will continue to exist, they will continue to live in our midst and there will be terrorist incidents, probably even terrible ones, in our future.
Posted by: SomeCallMeTim | Dec 19, 2005 1:08:15 PM
AMERICABlog is suggesting that journalists were targets of "The President's Program". His POV is intersting, although I doubt that only journalists were under surveillance.
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