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 Bug
'Em and Bag 'Em
NSA surveillance, liberals and duplicitously playing the
civil liberties card...
[Mark Alexander] 1/10/06
Eight months
after George W. Bush was sworn in as our 43rd President, al-Qa'ida
terrorists, under the direction Osama bin Laden, hijacked four
commercial jets and used them to kill almost 3,000 of our countrymen,
all of them noncombatants in a decades-old asymmetric war between
Islamofascists and liberty.
Three days
after that bloodshed, the U.S. Senate and House voted 98-0
and 420-1, respectively, to authorize the President by war
resolution "to use all necessary and appropriate force against
those nations, organizations or persons he determines planned,
authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred
on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons,
in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism
against the United States by such nations, organizations or
persons."
Contributor
Mark Alexander
[Courtesty of The Federalist Patriot]
Mark
Morrison Alexander is Executive Editor and Publisher
of The
Federalist Patriot, the Web's "Conservative
E-Journal of Record" and now the most widely
subscribed Internet-based publication. [go to Alexander index]
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Bin Laden
and his terrorist cadre planned the 9/11 attack during the
last three years of Bill and Hillary Clinton's regime, training
the cell leaders and pre-positioning assets in the U.S. Bin
Laden's actions were largely unabated by the Clinton administration,
which was more interested in sending thousands of federal agents
to search for a lone abortion-clinic bomber in the mountains
of North Carolina than killing or capturing Osama. Eric Rudolph
was a much more politically attractive target than Bin Laden
back in 1998. Unfortunately, Rudolph evaded capture during
that two-year manhunt. In the same time period, the CIA and
military had several opportunities to take clear shots at Osama
- but Clinton declined.
Fortunately,
since 9/11, there have been no "future acts of international
terrorism against the United States," in large measure because
of the vision and determination of President Bush to implement
his Doctrine
of Preemption. Mr. Bush and our Allies dispatched the best
fighting forces on earth, to Afghanistan, Iraq and other locations
undisclosed, in an effort to take the fight to the enemy—the
- only way to prevail in The
Long War against an asymmetric threat, particularly in
the nuclear age.
Terrorists
have not struck again, but there have been plenty of
acts of treason against the United States.
Terrorists
have not been able to strike again, but there have been plenty
of acts
of treason against the United States, most of which have
been led by political opportunists like Ted Kennedy, Dick Durbin,
John Kerry, Chuck Schumer, et al.
Insisting
they "support our troops," these consummate leftists have emboldened
the enemy by attacking our troops' Commander in Chief, with
the insalubrious goal of gaining political ground. In other
words, key Democrats are willing to use the lives of America's
Armed Forces for nothing more than campaign fodder, going into
midterm elections.
The Left's
labors to undermine the administration's effort to protect
the U.S. from a catastrophic WMD attack know no bounds.
In recent
weeks, the Left attempted to derail the reauthorization of
the USA
Patriot Act. As you know, first and foremost, the Patriot
Act removes most of the legal and bureaucratic barriers preventing
law enforcement and intelligence authorities from sharing vital
information about terrorists and terrorist organizations targeting
the U.S. and our citizens around the world. Implementation
of the Patriot Act has, according to well placed intelligence
sources, resulted in the prevention of significant terrorist
acts on U.S. soil, including two interdictions of WMD, one
of those being nuclear WMD. (For more details on the latter,
see next week's edition.)
As the debate
about Patriot Act reauthorization got underway in mid-December,
it became clear that Democrats are making "privacy" a central
theme of their midterm-election campaigns. Concurrent with
that debate, but hardly coincidental, on 16 December The
New York Times published a front-page story accusing President
Bush of using the NSA to spy on U.S. citizens without a court
order. As you now know, the story detailed how the National
Security Agency targeted certain communications between known
international terrorists and their U.S. counterparts or supporters.
Of course,
the timing of the story not only bolstered the Democrats' privacy
complaints against the Patriot Act, but it was dropped the
same week Time's reporter James Risen released his
book ostensibly detailing all kinds of Patriot Act abuses.
The
New York Times knew
a year ago that President Bush violated no laws related
to NSA surveillance.
The
Times and all their follow-up media claim their articles
are "in the national interest" - to determine if President
Bush has broken any laws authorizing the NSA surveillance.
However, The Times had already determined, a year
earlier when information about the NSA's surveillance program
was first leaked, that President Bush had not violated any
laws related to procedures outlined in the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act of 1978. The President's actions were fully
within his prescribed constitutional authority.
"The Constitution
vests in the president inherent authority to conduct warrantless
intelligence surveillance (electronic or otherwise) of foreign
powers or their agents, and Congress cannot by statute extinguish
that constitutional authority," wrote Attorney General John
Ashcroft in 2002.
General
Ashcroft's opinion was similar to that of previous administrations.
Back in 1994, after the first attack on the World Trade Center
by Islamists, Clinton's Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick
argued, "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
and that the President may, as has been done, delegate this
authority to the Attorney General."
The
only law that has been broken pertains to the illegal
release of national-security information.
In fact,
the only law that has been broken in regard to the NSA's activity
is U.S. Code Title 18, Part I, Chapter 37, Section 798, pertaining
to the illegal release of national-security information.
Ironically,
when former CIA case officer Valerie Plame was identified by
the press as being with the CIA last year, Democrats were in
full protest, accusing the Bush administration of disclosing
the information to The Times as political retribution
and calling for an independent counsel and a full investigation.
They got that investigation, and it resulted in no criminal
charges of a leak, because Plame was not a covert officer at
the time she was identified as being with the CIA, and her
name was mentioned by an administration official only after
her husband, Joe Wilson, wrote an article for The Times about
his CIA mission to determine if Iraq was procuring yellow-cake
uranium from North Africa.
The exposure
of Plame's association with the CIA had exactly NO implications
or consequences for U.S. national security. However, the exposure
of the NSA's methods and capabilities in regard to intercepting
communications between terrorists targeting the U.S. has significant
and immediate implications for our national security.
Why? Well,
for example, in 1998, as al-Qa'ida was preparing their 9/11
attack, the NSA was tracking electronic communications from
senior al-Qa'ida operatives, including Osama. When that information
was leaked to, and by, the press, Osama disposed of his old
satellite phone system and set up a whole different set of
communication protocols, thus eluding detection of his 9/11
plans.
The same
realignment of communication protocols is now taking place
as a result of The Times NSA disclosure.
"It
was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very
important program in a time of war." —- President
Bush
"Our enemies
have learned information they should not have," said President
Bush this week. "The unauthorized disclosure of this [NSA]
effort damages our national security and puts our citizens
at risk. Revealing classified information is illegal, alerts
our enemies and endangers our country... It was a shameful
act for someone to disclose this very important program in
a time of war." Treasonous, actually - and the Justice Department
will soon determine which Democrat operative is the culprit.
More to
the point, former NSA director, Gen. Michael Hayden, said last
week, "This program has been successful in detecting and preventing
attacks inside the United States." Indeed it has, as we noted
above.
So where
are the Democrats protesting this traitorous leak - and demanding
investigations? Don't hold your breath... Ironically, the Democrats
have made "intelligence failures" the staple of their criticism
of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Now they seem determined to ensure
intelligence failures.
As for The
New York Times, to date, it has not even answered its
own ombudsman's inquiry about the timing of its 16 December
article. Not to be outdone by The Times, national
media outlets have, in the last two weeks, published irresponsible
headline stories on other intelligence methods, including
secret U.S. detention centers for captured terrorists around
the world and technology used in major cities to detect transit
of fissile material.
Democrats'
objections to the Patriot Act have nothing to do with
civil liberties and everything to do with political appearances.
For now,
the Left got what it wanted - Patriot Act debate was reauthorized
but put on a very short renewal lease of only one month. So
the debate begins all over again this month. Regarding the
privacy issue, The
Patriot editors certainly advocate for redundant oversight
of all domestic surveillance procedures because of the potential
for civil-liberty abuses. But Democrats' objections to the
Patriot Act have nothing to do with civil liberties and everything
to do with political appearances.
There is
no place for such trivial objections on the warfront with a
determined enemy. -one-
copyright
2006 Federalist Patriot
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