Sen. Jay Rockefeller wrote a weasel-worded....
By jkelly
Irish Pennants
....letter to Vice President Dick Cheney expressing doubt about the NSA intercept program.
Sen. Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is not impressed:
"For the nearly three years Senator Rockefeller has served
as Vice Chairman, I have heard no objection from him about
this valuable program. Now, when it appears to be politically
advantageous, Senator Rockefeller has chosen to release his
two and a half year old letter. Forgive me if I find this
to be inconsistent and a bit disingenuous."
Jamie Gorelick of the famed "Gorelick Wall" which did so much to make 9/11 possible, is among those piling on on the president. But over at NRO, Byron York has uncovered testimony from 1994 when she was singing a much different tune:
"The Department of Justice believes, and the case law
supports, that the president has inherent authority to
conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign
intelligence purposes,"
Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on July 14, 1994,
"and that the President may, as has been done, delegate
this authority to the Attorney General."
"It is important to understand," Gorelick continued, "that
the rules and methodology for criminal searches are
inconsistent with the collection of foreign intelligence
and would unduly frustrate the president in carrying out
his foreign intelligence responsibilities."
UPDATE: Here is a golden oldie from the files of the New York Times which James Risen and Eric Lichtblau evidently didn't review before writing their story:
<<<
COURT SAYS U.S. SPY AGENCY CAN TAP OVERSEAS MESSAGES
By DAVID BURNHAM, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES (NYT) 1051 words Published: November 7, 1982
A Federal appeals court has ruled that the National Security Agency may lawfully intercept messages between United States citizens and people overseas, even if there is no cause to believe the Americans are foreign agents, and then provide summaries of these messages to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Because the National Security Agency is among the largest and most secretive intelligence agencies and because millions of electronic messages enter and leave the United States each day, lawyers familiar with the intelligence agency consider the decision to mark a significant increase in the legal authority of the Government to keep track of its citizens.
Reverses 1979 Ruling
The Oct. 21 decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit involves the Government's surveillance of a Michiganborn lawyer, Abdeen Jabara, who for many years has represented Arab-American citizens and alien residents in court. Some of his clients had been investigated by the F.B.I.
Mr. Jabara sued the F.B.I, and the National Security Agency, and in 1979 Federal District Judge Ralph M. Freeman ruled that the agency's acquisition of several of Mr. Jabara's overseas messages violated his Fourth Amendment right to be free of ''unreasonable searches and seizures.'' Last month's decision reverses that ruling.
In earlier court proceedings, the F.B.I. acknowledged that it then disseminated the information to 17 other law-enforcement or intelligence agencies and three foreign governments.
The opinion of the three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals held, ''The simple fact remains that the N.S.A. lawfully acquired Jabara's messages.''
The court ruled further that the lawyer's Fourth Amendment rights ''were not violated when summaries of his overseas telegraphic messages'' were furnished to the investigative bureau ''irrespective of whether there was reasonable cause to believe that he was a foreign agent.'' >>>
Hat tip: Newsbusters
The Wall Street Journal has additional information about the legality of the NSA intercepts:
The courts have been explicit on this point, most recently
in In Re: Sealed Case, the 2002 opinion by the special panel
of appellate judges established to hear FISA appeals. In
its per curiam opinion, the court noted that in a previous
FISA case (U.S. v. Truong), a federal "court, as did all the
other courts to have decided the issue, held that the
President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless
searches to obtain foreign intelligence information." And
further that "we take for granted that the President does
have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could
not encroach on the President's constitutional power."
As a Justice Department official, John Yoo, now a law professor at Berkeley, argued the administration's case for treatment of al Qaeda prisoners. Here's an op-ed he wrote for the LA Times on the president's authority:
Why no strict war-making process? Because the framers
understood that war would require the speed, decisiveness
and secrecy that only the presidency could bring. "Energy
in the executive," Alexander Hamilton argued in the
Federalist Papers, "is a leading character in the definition
of good government. It is essential to the protection of
the community against foreign attacks."
And, he continued, "the direction of war most peculiarly
demands those qualities which distinguish the exercise of
power by a single hand."
Back to the invaluable Byron York. He notes in a post at the Corner that at the April 14, 2004 meeting of the 9/11 Commission, a member of the Commission staff reported that:
Many agents in the field told us that although there is
now less hesitancy in seeking approval for electronic
surveillance under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act, or FISA, the application process nonetheless continues
to be long and slow. Requests for such approvals are
overwhelming the ability of the system to process them
and to conduct the surveillance. The Department of Justice
and FBI are attempting to address bottlenecks in the process.
In what I promise will be the last thing I stick in this post, this morning Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez and LtGen. Michael Hayden, now a deputy director of National Intelligence but the head of the NSA when the intercept program began held a news conference.
The transcript is here.
whitehouse.gov
The bottom line, for me, is this guote from LtGen. Hayden:
GENERAL HAYDEN: This program has been successful in detecting and preventing attacks inside the United States.
Q General Hayden, I know you're not going to talk about specifics about that, and you say it's been successful. But would it have been as successful -- can you unequivocally say that something has been stopped or there was an imminent attack or you got information through this that you could not have gotten through going to the court?
GENERAL HAYDEN: I can say unequivocally, all right, that we have got information through this program that would not otherwise have been available.
Q Through the court? Because of the speed that you got it?
GENERAL HAYDEN: Yes, because of the speed, because of the procedures, because of the processes and requirements set up in the FISA process, I can say unequivocally that we have used this program in lieu of that and this program has been successful.
Hayden added:
The more we discuss it, the more we put it in the face of those who would do us harm, the more they will respond to this and protect their communications and make it more difficult for us to defend the nation.
http://www.irishpennants.com/archives/2005/12/sen_jay_rockefe.php
breitbart.com
spectator.org
nationalreview.com
newsbusters.org
opinionjournal.com
latimes.com
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