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The War Against the War on Terrorism
Stoking the NSA wiretap flames…
[J. F. Kelly, Jr.] 1/27/06

The furor being generated in Congress and in the media over what is being termed the wiretap scandal has George W. Bush’s political opponents salivating. This is the issue that they hope can further discredit the administration and prepare the way for Republican defeats in the coming congressional elections. Their glee over having a cause celebre that has about half of Americans worried about abuse of power by the executive branch and intrusions into their privacy knows no bounds.

Hilary Clinton departed from her new kinder, gentler image to pronounce the Bush presidency the worst ever. Big Al Gore, inventor of the internet and unsuccessful candidate for president, weighed in with an unusually harsh attack against a wartime president, accusing Bush of crimes against the Constitution.

The Bush bashers, giddy at the scent of blood, are breathlessly speaking of possible impeachable offenses. The ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights have filed suit in federal court charging that the president violated the constitution by authorizing the National Security Agency (NSA) to monitor international phone calls from the United States without first obtaining a warrant, thus by-passing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The ACLU and the Center, of course, lack standing to bring these suits unless they can somehow demonstrate that they suffered harm. Even if they could, they know that the government, because of the Totten Doctrine, cannot be compelled to reveal sensitive intelligence matters. But these futile legal actions are not so much motivated by a concern for constitutional rights as by political opposition to the Bush administration. In fact, the combined purpose of all these speeches and lawsuits is to whip up public fears that the government may be spying on them and taking unwarranted liberties with their rights to privacy.

Americans are particularly vulnerable to such fears about “big brother” governmental behavior. Ordinarily sensible people who have no problem with providing detailed personal information on credit or employment applications suddenly develop grave concerns over the remote possibility that some government agent may be snooping on some personal conversation. Perhaps this is indicative of an exaggerated sense of self-importance. More likely it’s just another part of a generalized distrust of government. However explained, the fear that the Bush administration is steadily and deliberately eroding the freedoms of Americans by use the Patriot Act is being carefully nurtured by the president’s political opponents. Many of those who opposed Samuel Alito’s nomination to the Supreme Court said that they feared he would be too strong an advocate of executive power.

It is time for everyone to take a really deep breath. Do any Americans who are not terrorist sympathizers actually believe that their government is interested in, or has the resources for, eavesdropping on their private conversations? Have we become so paranoid as to think that loyal Americans who are not communicating with known foreign terrorists have anything to fear in this regard?

To those of us who are willing to sacrifice some privacy for greater security and want the administration to act vigorously to preempt terrorist attacks, the salient question is not whether the Bush administration is exceeding its authority, it’s whether or not the law needs be changed to provide the administration more flexibility to act quickly. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was written nearly thirty years ago, an ancient age in terms of communications technology. The drafters could hardly have imagined the widespread cell phone usage of today. The act is not sufficient in dealing with the threat we face today. Contrary to popular belief, it does not permit the government to speedily obtain warrants to tap suspicious conversations unless one defines “speedy” in terms of hours. But even hours may constitute too long a wait if intelligence suggests that an imminent terrorist attack is being discussed. Indeed, every minute might count.

Our technology today permits us to gain information on terrorist movements and plans that could enable us to thwart actions like the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon. Yet, the process of complying with FISA apparently denied us information on the movements of the two terrorists that commandeered AA Flight 77. We are talking here about real American lives, not abstract principles. If critics succeed in emasculating the administration and transforming the war on terrorism into a struggle between an enemy who knows no constraints and a government whose every move is challenged on idealistic grounds for political purposes, then we are surely doomed to suffer another terrorist attack, perhaps more awful than 9//11. If that happens, Americans will derive little satisfaction from the knowledge that their privacy was assiduously safeguarded to the very end. -one-

copyright 2006 J. F. Kelly, Jr.

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