Secrets and Spies

The crush of political news has been overwhelming in the past week or so, but so has the holiday crush, so blogging has been off.

A quick overview of the spy scandals:

First came the news that the Pentagon was spying on suspicious anti-war, peace-loving terrorists, such as the Quakers, Is the Pentagon spying on Americans?, and student groups opposed to the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" ban on lesbian, gay and bisexual military personnel, AMERICAblog.

Then came the news from the NYT that "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." Bush Secretly Lifted Some Limits on Spying in U.S. After 9/11, Officials Say.

Next up, was the revelation that the Times held the story for over a year, delaying publication at the request of the White House. The original publication date would have been right before the election. See: At the Times, a Scoop Deferred.

The import of that is noted by Jonathan Alter of Newsweek, Bush's Snoopgate, who put it well:

Finally we have a Washington scandal that goes beyond sex, corruption and political intrigue to big issues like security versus liberty and the reasonable bounds of presidential power. President Bush came out swinging on Snoopgate—he made it seem as if those who didn’t agree with him wanted to leave us vulnerable to Al Qaeda—but it will not work. We’re seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator, or in his own mind, no doubt, like Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.

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. . . . 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.

See also: "All the news that's fit to print" -- except when it's about us. Discussions at firedoglake and Eschaton are also worth reading to see the issues involved.

Yesterday's NYT gave the latest installment of the spy scandal, in F.B.I. Watched Activist Groups, New Files Show, reporting that "[c]ounterterrorism agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have conducted numerous surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations that involved, at least indirectly, groups active in causes as diverse as the environment, animal cruelty and poverty relief . . ." The FBI targeted "a handful of groups, including PETA, the environmental group Greenpeace and the Catholic Workers group, which promotes antipoverty efforts and social causes."

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“But out of the gobbledygook, comes a very clear thing: [unclear] you can’t trust the government; you can’t believe what they say; and you can’t rely on their judgment; and the – the implicit infallibility of presidents, which has been an accepted thing in America, is badly hurt by this, because it shows that people do things the President wants to do even though it’s wrong, and the President can be wrong.”
-- White House aide H.R. Haldeman , June 14, 1971, responding to the publication of the Pentagon Papers in the New York Times the day before.

Philly Daily News Blogger Attytood provides an excellent summary, with a historical reflection (as well as the above quote) in How the New York Times forgot the lessons of the Pentagon Papers case:

History doesn't change all that much. What changes more is the way that everyday people -- the masses and the mass media who are supposed to represent them -- respond to the predictable actions and abuses of those who are in power.

But the record is clear: America is well-served by an aggressive press; poorly served when editors are willing to bend to the wishes and whims of the White House. Surely, there are matters of national security that should not be published or aired. . . . But the majority of the time, the administration isn't trying to preserve legitimate secrets, but rather trying to preserve its own power, pure and simple. It's true today with the government's spying on domestic phone calls and email without court approval. And it was certainly true with the Pentagon Papers in 1971.

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In his speech, No President Is Above the Law, Senator Robert Byrd warns:

The President claims that these powers are within his role as Commander in Chief. Make no mistake, the powers granted to the Commander in Chief are specifically those as head of the Armed Forces. These warrantless searches are conducted not against a foreign power, but against unsuspecting and unknowing American citizens. They are conducted against individuals living on American soil, not in Iraq or Afghanistan. There is nothing within the powers granted in the Commander in Chief clause that grants the President the ability to conduct clandestine surveillance of American civilians. We must not allow such groundless, foolish claims to stand.

The President claims a boundless authority through the resolution that authorized the war on those who perpetrated the September 11th attacks. But that resolution does not give the President unchecked power to spy on our own people. That resolution does not give the Administration the power to create covert prisons for secret prisoners. That resolution does not authorize the torture of prisoners to extract information from them. That resolution does not authorize running black-hole secret prisons in foreign countries to get around U.S. law. That resolution does not give the President the powers reserved only for kings and potentates.

I continue to be shocked and astounded by the breadth with which the Administration undermines the constitutional protections afforded to the people, and the arrogance with which it rebukes the powers held by the Legislative and Judicial Branches. The President has cast off federal law, enacted by Congress, often bearing his own signature, as mere formality. He has rebuffed the rule of law, and he has trivialized and trampled upon the prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure guaranteed to Americans by the United States Constitution.

We are supposed to accept these dirty little secrets. We are told that it is irresponsible to draw attention to President Bush's gross abuse of power and Constitutional violations. But what is truly irresponsible is to neglect to uphold the rule of law. We listened to the President speak last night on the potential for democracy in Iraq. He claims to want to instill in the Iraqi people a tangible freedom and a working democracy, at the same time he violates our own U.S. laws and checks and balances? President Bush called the recent Iraqi election "a landmark day in the history of liberty." I dare say in this country we may have reached our own sort of landmark. Never have the promises and protections of Liberty seemed so illusory. Never have the freedoms we cherish seemed so imperiled.

These renegade assaults on the Constitution and our system of laws strike at the very core of our values, and foster a sense of mistrust and apprehension about the reach of government.

I am reminded of Thomas Payne's famous words, "These are the times that try men's souls."