Kudos to fellow blogger Glenn
Greenwald for breaking this story:
WASHINGTON – A July 2002 Justice Department statement to a Senate
committee appears to contradict several key arguments that the Bush
administration is making to defend its eavesdropping on U.S. citizens
without court warrants.The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the law governing such
operations, was working well, the department said in 2002. A “significant
review” would be needed to determine whether FISA’s legal requirements for
obtaining warrants should be loosened because they hampered counterterrorism
efforts, the department said then.President Bush, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and other top officials
now argue that warrantless eavesdropping is necessary in part because
complying with the FISA law is too burdensome and impedes the government’s
ability to rapidly track communications between suspected terrorists.In its 2002 statement, the Justice Department said it opposed a
legislative proposal to change FISA to make it easier to obtain warrants
that would allow the super-secret National Security Agency to listen in on
communications involving non-U.S. citizens inside the United States.Today, senior U.S. officials complain that FISA prevents them from doing
that.James A. Baker, the Justice Department’s top lawyer on intelligence
policy, made the statement before the Senate Intelligence Committee on July
31, 2002. He was laying out the department’s position on an amendment to
FISA proposed by Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio. The committee rejected DeWine’s
proposal, leaving FISA intact.So while Congress chose not to weaken FISA in 2002, today Bush and his
allies contend that Congress implicitly gave Bush the authority to evade
FISA’s requirements when it authorized him to use force in response to the
Sept. 11, 2001, attacks three days after they occurred – a contention that
many lawmakers reject.
Article continues
here.
So to translate – Bush and his cronies have been lying yet again. They have
been defending the warrantless wiretaps by saying FISA was to constrictive yet
less than a year following 9/11 the law was working well. Since that time
nothing has changed in the law to make it more constrictive. They have just
plain out lied to America in trying to defend this illegal program.