Bush Defends Secret Spying in the U.S.

Bush Defends Secret Spying in the U.S.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/politics/AP-Bush.html
http://tinyurl.com/d3tvh

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: December 17, 2005
Filed at 10:22 p.m. ET

[Is this a sign that the crimes of the bUSH cabal are so out of
control that MSM has to cover it?]

Transcript: President Bush's Address (December 17, 2005)
Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts (Dec. 16, 2005)
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Facing angry criticism and challenges to his
authority in Congress, President Bush on Saturday unapologetically
defended his administration's right to conduct secret post-Sept. 11
spying in the United States as ''critical to saving American lives.''

Bush said congressional leaders had been briefed on the operation
more than a dozen times. That included Democrats as well as
Republicans in the House and Senate, a GOP lawmaker said.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said she had been told
on several occasions that Bush had authorized unspecified activities
by the National Security Agency, the nation's largest spy agency.
She said she had expressed strong concerns at the time, and that
Bush's statement Saturday ''raises serious questions as to what the
activities were and whether the activities were lawful.''

Often appearing angry in an eight-minute address, the president made
clear he has no intention of halting his authorizations of the
monitoring activities and said public disclosure of the program by
the news media had endangered Americans.

Bush's willingness to publicly acknowledge a highly classified
spying program was a stunning development for a president known to
dislike disclosure of even the most mundane inner workings of his
White House. Just a day earlier he had refused to talk about it.

Since October 2001, the super-secret National Security Agency has
eavesdropped on the international phone calls and e-mails of people
inside the United States without court-approved warrants. Bush said
steps like these would help fight terrorists like those who involved
in the Sept. 11 plot.

''The activities I have authorized make it more likely that killers
like these 9/11 hijackers will be identified and located in time,''
Bush said. ''And the activities conducted under this authorization
have helped detect and prevent possible terrorist attacks in the
United States and abroad.''

News of the program came at a particularly damaging and delicate
time.

Already, the administration was under fire for allegedly operating
secret prisons in Eastern Europe and shipping suspected terrorists
to other countries for harsh interrogations.

The NSA program's existence surfaced as Bush was fighting to save
the expiring provisions of the USA Patriot Act, the domestic anti-
terrorism law enacted after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Democrats
and a few Republicans who say the law gives so much latitude to law
enforcement officials that it threatens Americans' constitutional
liberties succeeded Friday in stalling its renewal.

So Bush scrapped the version of his weekly radio address that he had
already taped -- on the recent elections in Iraq -- and delivered a
live speech from the Roosevelt Room in which he lashed out at the
senators blocking the Patriot Act as irresponsible and confirmed the
NSA program.

Bush said his authority to approve what he called a ''vital tool in
our war against the terrorists'' came from his constitutional powers
as commander in chief. He said that he has personally signed off on
reauthorizations more than 30 times.

''The American people expect me to do everything in my power under
our laws and Constitution to protect them and their civil
liberties,'' Bush said. ''And that is exactly what I will continue
to do, so long as I'm the president of the United States.''

James Bamford, author of two books on the NSA, said the program
could be problematic because it bypasses a special court set up by
the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to authorize
eavesdropping on suspected terrorists.

''I didn't hear him specify any legal right, except his right as
president, which in a democracy doesn't make much sense,'' Bamford
said in an interview. ''Today, what Bush said is he went around the
law, which is a violation of the law -- which is illegal.''

Retired Adm. Bobby Inman, who led the NSA from 1977 to 1981, said
Bush's authorization of the eavesdropping would have been justified
in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks ''because at that
point you couldn't get a court warrant unless you could show
probable cause.''

''Once the Patriot Act was in place, I am puzzled what was the need
to continue outside the court,'' Inman added. But he said, ''If the
fact is valid that Congress was notified, there will be no
consequences.''

Skip to next paragraph

Transcript: President Bush's Address (December 17, 2005)
Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts (Dec. 16, 2005) Susan
Low Bloch, a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown
University Law Center, said Bush was ''taking a hugely expansive
interpretation of the Constitution and the president's powers under
the Constitution.

That view was echoed by congressional Democrats.

''I tell you, he's President George Bush, not King George Bush. This
is not the system of government we have and that we fought for,''
Sen. Russell Feingold, D-Wis., told The Associated Press.

Added Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt.: ''The Bush administration seems to
believe it is above the law.''

Bush defended the program as narrowly designed and used ''consistent
with U.S. law and the Constitution.'' He said it is employed only to
intercept the international communications of people inside the U.S.
who have been determined to have ''a clear link'' to al-Qaida or
related terrorist organizations.

Government officials have refused to provide details, including
defining the standards used to establish such a link or saying how
many people are being monitored.

The program is reviewed every 45 days, using fresh threat
assessments, legal reviews, and information from previous activities
under the program, the president said. Intelligence officials
involved in the monitoring receive extensive training in civil
liberties, he said.

Bush said leaders in Congress have been briefed more than a dozen
times. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., told House Republicans that
those informed were the top Republican and Democratic leaders of the
House and Senate and of each chamber's intelligence
committees. ''They've been through the whole thing,'' Hoekstra said.

The president had harsh words for those who revealed the program to
the media, saying they acted improperly and illegally. The
surveillance was first disclosed in Friday's New York Times.

''As a result, our enemies have learned information they should not
have,'' Bush said. ''The unauthorized disclosure of this effort
damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk.''

Bush has more to worry about on Capitol Hill than his difficulties
with the Patriot Act. Lawmakers have begun challenging Bush on his
Iraq policy, reflecting polling that shows half of the country is
not behind him on the war.

On Sunday, the president was continuing his effort to reverse that
by giving his fifth major speech in less than three weeks on Iraq.

One bright spot for the White House was a new poll showing that a
strong majority of Americans oppose, as does Bush and most
lawmakers, an immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq. The AP-
Ipsos poll found 57 percent of those surveyed said the U.S. military
should stay until Iraq is stabilized.