Pushing the Limits Of Wartime Powers

Pushing the Limits Of Wartime Powers

By Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, December 18, 2005; A01


In his four-year campaign against al Qaeda, President Bush has turned the U.S. national security apparatus inward to secretly collect information on American citizens on a scale unmatched since the intelligence reforms of the 1970s.

The president's emphatic defense yesterday of warrantless eavesdropping on U.S. citizens and residents marked the third time in as many months that the White House has been obliged to defend a departure from previous restraints on domestic surveillance. In each case, the Bush administration concealed the program's dimensions or existence from the public and from most members of Congress.

Since October, news accounts have disclosed a burgeoning Pentagon campaign for "detecting, identifying and engaging" internal enemies that included a database with information on peace protesters. A debate has roiled over the FBI's use of national security letters to obtain secret access to the personal records of tens of thousands of Americans. And now come revelations of the National Security Agency's interception of telephone calls and e-mails from the United States -- without notice to the federal court that has held jurisdiction over domestic spying since 1978.

Defiant in the face of criticism, the Bush administration has portrayed each surveillance initiative as a defense of American freedom. Bush said yesterday that his NSA eavesdropping directives were "critical to saving American lives" and "consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution." After years of portraying an offensive waged largely overseas, Bush justified the internal surveillance with new emphasis on "the home front" and the need to hunt down "terrorists here at home."

Bush's constitutional argument, in the eyes of some legal scholars and previous White House advisers, relies on extraordinary claims of presidential war-making power. Bush said yesterday that the lawfulness of his directives was affirmed by the attorney general and White House counsel, a list that omitted the legislative and judicial branches of government. On occasion the Bush administration has explicitly rejected the authority of courts and Congress to impose boundaries on the power of the commander in chief, describing the president's war-making powers in legal briefs as "plenary" -- a term defined as "full," "complete," and "absolute."

A high-ranking intelligence official with firsthand knowledge said in an interview yesterday that Vice President Cheney, then-Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet and Michael V. Hayden, then a lieutenant general and director of the National Security Agency, briefed four key members of Congress about the NSA's new domestic surveillance on Oct. 25, 2001, and Nov. 14, 2001, shortly after Bush signed a highly classified directive that eliminated some restrictions on eavesdropping against U.S. citizens and permanent residents.

cont..........

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/17/AR2005121701233_pf.html

or just stop using the loaded phrase: "We're at war."

We are not at war. We have lost our freakin' minds and are attacking shadows on the wall of the cave.

that it couldn't/shouldn't be done, possibly for legal reasons.... and I also seem to remember the cheney saying DO IT.

http://www.thememoryhole.org/policestate/iao-logo.htm


>>> The government's Information Awareness Office--you know, the Defense agency that's running the Total Information Awareness Program, the huge database that will track everything about everyone in the US and beyond, helmed by convicted felon John Poindexter--keeps getting more shy. First, the IAO took down the biographies of its senior staff. (The Memory Hole has mirrored them here.)

Now, the IAO has removed its eye-death-ray logo, which was denounced far and wide as being Orwellian, Masonic, and just plain creepy as hell.

Above, we've archived the logo's large version. Below, we've archived the IAO's banner, which used to incorporate the logo but is now quite plain. (The banner also used to contain the IAO's slogan, "Scienta est potentia," which is Latin for, "Knowledge is power.")

To fondly recall how the logo and banner used to look in context, follow these links:

The original homepage (with logo) | The current homepage (sans logo)

The original TIA page (with logo-banner) | The current TIA page (with plain banner)

A bu$h appointed crony writes a memo saying bu$h has the authority to over rule the courts,
Congress and the Constitution because we are engaged in a War On Terror? A war that was declared from the White House, not Congress? And the Courts and Congress does nothing?

Why has this administration has not been stuffed into Orange Jump Suits with matching chrome manacles and hauled off to the World Court?

(on edit)

Though that lead-off statement repeats the public myth that this war is about al-Qaeda...

<snip>

In his four-year campaign against al Qaeda, President Bush has turned the U.S. national security apparatus inward to secretly collect information on American citizens on a scale unmatched since the intelligence reforms of the 1970s.

<end snip>