NYT: Bush Secretly Lifted Some Limits on Spying in U.S. After 9/11, Officials Say

New York Times ^ | December 15, 2005 | JAMES RISEN and ERIC LICHTBLAUD

[West Coast Conservative]

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 represents 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.

"This is really a sea change," said a former senior official who specializes in national security law. "It's almost a mainstay of this country that the N.S.A. only does foreign searches."

Nearly a dozen current and former officials, who were granted anonymity because of the classified nature of the program, discussed it with reporters for The New York Times because of their concerns about the operation's legality and oversight.

According to those officials and others, reservations about aspects of the program have also been expressed by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who is the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and a judge presiding over a secret court that oversees intelligence matters.

[Blzbba]

"If President Bush was interested in defending the country, he would have done something about the borders after 9/11. How many years has it been since 9/11?"


Hey, you're not a patriot!! If you've been paying attention, you'll see that, since 9/11, Bush has signed into law 1500+ pages of beauracracy (Patriot Act), spent billions of $$$ like a drunken sailor, created unprecedented amts of federal gov't, spent billions on disaster relief, spent billions more on Medicare and Transportation...well, he's just spent billions and billions of dollars!!

Who cares about our porous Southern border - we're fightin' the terrorists over there so we don't have to fight 'em over here!!

/massive sarcasm, esp. that 'patriot' part, seeing as how you're a vet whose service I thank you for!

[af_vet_rr]

Two quotes, from brilliant men, that the people applauding this sort of thing should think about:

"If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."
-- James Madison

"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security"
-- Ben Franklin

That's what pisses me off so much - I hear people talking about "we have to do these things to protect ourselves from the terrorists".

The terrorists can kill Americans, thousands, even millions. The terrorists can blow up buildings or malls. The terrorists cannot destroy our freedom and they cannot destroy our Constitution.

Only the politicians and a complacent population can destroy our freedom and destroy our Constitution.

The terrorists want our society changed - they don't care about us because we are Christians - they have Italy and the Vatican (and even Israel) a helluva lot closer if they were just on a crusade to kill Christians.

The terrorists fear us and fight us because they and their masters are afraid of freedom. Our closest and second closet Islamic allies, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, aren't even free nations - that should speak volumes about how well freedom and Islam go together.

If the terrorists can do enough to convince the American people and the American politicians to throw our freedom away, then they win. Simple as that. All of the sacrifices made by the millions who have served in the military for America would be gone, simply because people want to feel a little "safer".

[Paperdoll]

Hopefully, W invoked wire-tapping limits via the word "international" 'phone calls and e-mails.

[af_vet_rr]

Amazing how Congress was able to write and pass a 1500+ page document into law in less than a month after 9-11. Surely it wasn't pre-written and just waiting for a 9-11-style event to occur?

And parts of it wouldn't have been written during the Clinton administration, and then shelved after Al Gore received negative feedback over remarks he made about some of the items to be addressed, would it?

[zook]

If Hillary Clinton becomes President, and if we face the kind of terrorist threat we experienced with 9/11, then I pray that she'll have the wisdom to spy on those that need to be spied on.

Any other position is irresponsible, childish, shortsighted, etc.

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

NYT: Bush Secretly Lifted Some Limits on Spying in U.S. After 9/11, Officials Say

BullSplatter !

NYT: Democrats try to Railroad Bush saying he Secretly Lifted Some Limits on Spying in U.S. After 9/11, Official NYT leakers Say

[Paperdoll]

LOL! Cell phones during the second world war? We had "party lines" - now don't misinterpret that one, young'un.

[zook]

"The terrorists cannot destroy our freedom and they cannot destroy our Constitution."

The hell they can't. There are so many scenarios under which they could do just that. If a nuclear weapon gets smuggled into this country, you just watch how much "freedom" means then.

I'll say it again. Franklin was wrong. Those who would give up national security in exchange for some temporary liberty deserve neither.

[Republican Wildcat]

The dishonesty of the headline is just unbelievable. Secretly? As if he would inform the terrorists that they are being spied on! Stupid.

[Blzbba]

"And parts of it wouldn't have been written during the Clinton administration, and then shelved after Al Gore received negative feedback over remarks he made about some of the items to be addressed, would it?"


Of course not! That would suggest that it was pre-planned, when we all know it was just a response to 9/11!!

(1500+ page document drafted AND passed inside 30 days by Congress? It boggles the imagination!)

[Blzbba]

"I'll say it again. Franklin was wrong. Those who would give up national security in exchange for some temporary liberty deserve neither."


So the freedoms guaranteed in the Bill of Rights are "temporary liberty" to you?

[zook]

Our most important fredoms will be temporary inded if we allow ourselves to be defeated by Islamic totalitarianism. It seems silly to have to state that the Islamist threat far far outweighs whatever discomfort a bit of spying might cause, but apparently it needs to be repeated and repeated and repeated. Freedom must be balanced with national survival. And that's why the law (and the Constitution) provides for the President's right to act as he did.

[Blzbba]

"Our most important fredoms will be temporary inded if we allow ourselves to be defeated by Islamic totalitarianism. It seems silly to have to state that the Islamist threat far far outweighs whatever discomfort a bit of spying might cause, but apparently it needs to be repeated and repeated and repeated. Freedom must be balanced with national survival. And that's why the law (and the Constitution) provides for the President's right to act as he did. "



That's pretty insulting to our military, which would never surrender or be defeated by a ragtag group of camel f***ers. Last I checked, there isn't an Islamic military group on the planet with enough brains, men, or firepower to defeat the Greatest Military Unit in history.

Don't be so afraid of these loser towelheads. The more freedoms we willingly sacrifice on the altar of the WOT, the more the terrorists will have already won without fighting. Some of us aren't as afraid of them as you appear to be.

Chew on that for awhile.

[af_vet_rr]

Forgot to include a couple of select quotes in response to your quotes:

Good intentions will always be pleaded for every assumption of authority. It is hardly too strong to say that the Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions. There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters.
— Daniel Webster (1782 - 1852)

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
William Pitt, 1783

You need only reflect that one of the best ways to get yourself a reputation as a dangerous citizen these days is to go about repeating the very phrases which our founding fathers used in the great struggle for independence.
Attributed to Charles Austin Beard (1874-1948)

Find out just what the people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
Frederick Douglass, Aug. 4, 1857

'Useful,' and 'necessity' was always 'the tyrant's plea'."
C.S. Lewis

"Attack another's rights and you destroy your own."
John Jay Chapman

Another from Madison about this topic: "It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad."
James Madison

"The greatest danger to American freedom is a government that ignores the Constitution."
Thomas Jefferson

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable."
Teddy Roosevelt (during World War I)

"The cause of liberty becomes a mockery if the price to be paid is the wholesale destruction of those who are to enjoy liberty."
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

"Human beings will generally exercise power when they can get it, and they will exercise it most undoubtedly in popular governments under pretense of public safety."
Daniel Webster

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations."
James Madison

"If men use their liberty in such a way as to surrender their liberty, are they thereafter any the less slaves?"
Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)

As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air - however slight - lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness."
Justice William O. Douglas

The privacy and dignity of our citizens (are) being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen -- a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of a (person's) life."
Justice William O. Douglas

[zook]

You're thinking about today. I'm thinking about tomorrow. We already see how a good portion of the world and even America wants us to bind our hands, wants to weaken our ability to defend ourselves. You say we ought not be afraid of Islamist totalitarianism? Look around--parts of Europe have already surrendered to it. We've lost over 2000 good American civilian lives because of it.

Throughout our history we've allowed our presidents to take strong acts to save our nation from internal and external threats to our security. Lincoln, Roosevelt, Reagan, and others come to mind. We became more free, not less, because of their actions.

[zook]

Every one of your quotes is either meaningless in its context or can be demonstrated to be completely false. It may be rhetorically serviceable to trot out a lot of quotes like these, but it also demonstrates a total denial of reality and, ironically, an unwillingness to face up to tyrrany.

[rattrap]

The terrorists can kill Americans, thousands, even millions. The terrorists can blow up buildings or malls. The terrorists cannot destroy our freedom and they cannot destroy our Constitution.

Only the politicians and a complacent population can destroy our freedom and destroy our Constitution.

Deserves repeating.

[af_vet_rr]

The hell they can't. There are so many scenarios under which they could do just that. If a nuclear weapon gets smuggled into this country, you just watch how much "freedom" means then.

You're telling me that terrorists can decide to do away with the Constitution, and with our freedoms?

I don't know your educational background, but I know that many public schools have gone downhill over the years, and so the students they crank out these days may not have a fundamental understanding of our government, and so I'll try to assist you in your education about the Constitution and our government in general.

First off - terrorists don't decide the budgets nor the size and scope of our government - they can influence the budgets through death and destruction, but they don't decide on them. You have to be an American citizen and you have to be sitting in Congress or the White House to have that kind of power.

Second, just because the terrorists have killed Americans and keeping doing so in Iraq, doesn't mean they are automatically given control over the Constitution. In theory, making changes to the Constitution requires a lot of cooperation from Americans as well as Congress and the Supreme Court. A terrorist can't simply say "we killed five thousand Americans, now give us your Constitution so we can destroy it".

Third, and last but not least, the terrorists don't have the power to say "Okay, the FBI can now do this, the local police can now do that, the government can start monitoring this, and increase in size to handle that". It goes back to elected officials (for the most part), and for the American people tolerating it.

To complete this short little lecture, and hopefully this won't confuse you, I will say this: Terrorists can create an excuse for the politicians to step in and start destroying the Constitution. Again though, the American people would have to tolerate this, and the terrorists won't have any power to wield - only the politicians can try to wield that power.

[rattrap]

Temporary Liberty?!? Temporary F$&#ing Liberty?!?

Move to Cuba, then you'll have all the national security you want and none of the inconvenience of liberty.

[af_vet_rr]

Our most important fredoms will be temporary inded if we allow ourselves to be defeated by Islamic totalitarianism.

The only way we could be defeated by Islamic totalitarianism (and btw, I'm glad to see that you understand that Islamic radicals fear us because of our freedoms, because freedom and Islamic governments seem to be mutually exclusive), is if we elect them to power. They have no power otherwise.

Sure, they could walk across our wide-open border and try to exert some control or create some chaos. Pancho Villa tried that, and got away with it, but I don't think that would happen again. I think you would have a lot of well-armed pissed-off Texans, etc., headed towards the border.