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To: Boot Hill
"Domestic intelligence ..."

There is no question that the president has the power to spy on forign powers, nobody is questioning that. This is all about spying on U.S. persons, and unless those U.S. persons have been shown to be an agent of a foreign power, that is domestic.

The article above even goes the next step and tries to justify a blanket wiretapping of everybody, in hopes of finding somebody.
28 posted on 01/26/2006 9:48:44 PM PST by ndt
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To: ndt

Demonstrably incorrect.

The difference between "domestic" and "foreign" national security intercepts has nothing to do with the point of origin, destination or intercpetion of the communication. Nor does it depend on whether either party is a U.S. citizen or resident. The difference between "foreign" and "domestic" national security intercepts, as the term is used by the courts and intelligence agencies, is the source of the threat, i.e., whether at least one party to the communication was acting as an agent of a foreign power.

That distinction was never made more clear than it was in the Truong case. Truong, a U.S. resident alien, and Humphrey, a U.S. citizen and an employee of the USIA, conspired to commit espionage by delivering confidential government documents to the communist government of Vietnam from 1976 to 1977. In this case, the court held that the intercepts did not require a warrant since both defendants were acting as agents of a foreign power and thus the intercepts were a legitimate exercise of foreign national security intelligence gathering.

Note that in Truong, both the origin and destination of the intercepted calls were within the United States. Note also, that both defendants were U.S. residents, and in Humphrey's case, a U.S. citizen, as well. Yet the court held that these were foreign national security intercepts.

Thus, your contention that in the present case of the national security wiretaps revealed by James Risen in the NYT, that they are "domestic" wiretaps is demonstrably untrue, they are "foreign" national security wiretaps.

29 posted on 01/26/2006 10:24:24 PM PST by Boot Hill ("...and Joshua went unto him and said: art thou for us, or for our adversaries?")
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