[Dialogue] A Time to Impeach

Tue Dec 20 12:11:28 EST 2005

Colleagues, a very sobering article. Peace, Harry 
  _____  

AlterNet

A Time to Impeach

By Doug Ireland, Direland
Posted on December 20, 2005, Printed on December 20, 2005
http://www.alternet.org/story/29826/

When the U.S. Senate last Friday refused to renew the liberticidal Patriot
Act -- with its provisions for spying on Americans' use of libraries and the
Internet, among other Constitution-shredding provisions of that iniquitous
law -- it was in part because that morning's
<http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/15/politics/15cnd-program.html> New York
Times had revealed how Bush and his White House had committed a major crime.

By ordering the National Security Agency -- the N.S.A, so secretive that in
Washington its initials are said to stand for "No Such Agency" -- to wiretap
and eavesdrop on thousands of American citizens without a court order, Bush
committed actions specifically forbidden by the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act (FISA). Passed in 1978 after the Senate's
<http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/reports/contents.htm>  Church
Committee documented in detail the Nixon administration's widespread use of
U.S. intelligence agencies to spy on the anti-Vietnam war movement and other
political dissidents, FISA "expressly made it a crime for government
officials 'acting under color of law' to engage in electronic eavesdropping
'other than pursuant to statute.'", as the director of the Center for
National Security Studies, Kate Martin, told
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/17/AR200512170
1233.html>  the Washington Post this past weekend. 

And the FISA statute required authorization of the secret Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court to make such domestic spying legal. Bush and
his NSA sought no such authorization before invading American citizens'
right to privacy -- a blatant flouting of the law that made both wavering
Democrats and libertarian Republicans mad enough to vote against extending
the hideous Patriot Act, which thankfully will now expire at the end of the
year.

Bush not only acknowledged, and defended, this illegal eavesdropping in a
Saturday radio address, he went further in a Monday morning press
conference, saying he'd "suggested" it. But as Wisconsin Democratic Senator
Russ Feingold -- who, together with conservative Idaho Republican Larry
Craig, led the filibuster that defeated the Patriot Act's renewal -- said
<http://news.ft.com/cms/s/e3b7f370-6ff5-11da-a1f7-0000779e2340.html>  this
weekend, "This is not how our democratic system of government works--the
president does not get to pick and choose which laws he wants to follow."

But Bush had plenty of bipartisan help from Democratic co-conspirators in
keeping knowledge of this illegal spying from reaching the American public.
It began in November 2001, in the wake of 9/11, and -- from the very first
briefing for Congressional leaders by Dick Cheney until today -- Democrats
on the Senate and House Intelligence Committees were told about it. Those
witting and complicit in hiding the crime included Democratic Senator John
D. Rockefeller IV, former chairman and later ranking member of the Senate
Intelligence Committee, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, former
ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee. They knew it was a crime
-- Rockefeller, for example, warned the administration against it -- and yet
did not make it public. They were frightened by polls showing security
hysteria at its height.

Worse, the New York Times itself was part of the coverup. When it broke its
scoop last Friday, the Times in its article admitted that, "After meeting
with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper
delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some
information that administration officials argued could be useful to
terrorists has been omitted." 

In other words, the Times sat on its story until after the 2004 presidential
elections, when American voters might have been able to stop this criminal
conduct by voting out the criminal. Not content with employing Judith Miller
as the megaphone for relaying the Bush administration's lies about Saddam's
having weapons of mass destruction, the Times again proved its servility to
power by not telling its readers it knew of criminal spying on them for an
entire year, until the election cycle was long past. Yet this aspect of the
Times' story has gone unremarked in the mass media.

Bush's excuses for the illegal eavesdropping are indeed risible. The Times
didn't mention it, but of 19,000 requests for eavesdropping the Federal
Intelligence Security Court has received from the Executive Branch since
1979, only five have ever been refused. Bush claimed again on Monday that
this flagrant flouting of the FISA law was necessary because fighting
"terrorists" needed to be done "quickly." Yet, as the Times reported, the
secret court can grant approval for wiretaps "within hours." 

And the excuse Bush offered Monday morning that this illegal subversion of
FISA was necessary to prevent 9/11-style terrorism is equally laughable. As
the ACLU pointed out in a study of FISA two years ago, "Although the Patriot
Act was rushed into law just weeks after 9/11, Congress's later
investigation into the attacks did not find that the former limits on FISA
powers had contributed to the government's failure to prevent the attacks."

A Zogby poll released Nov. 4 showed that, when asked if they agreed that,
"If President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war
with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable through
impeachment," Americans answered yes by 53 percent to 42 percent. It is
therefore not simply extremist raving to suggest that impeachment of George
Bush should be put on the table.

Remember that, in the impeachment of Richard Nixon, Article 2 of the three
Articles of Impeachment dealt with illegal wiretapping of Americans. It said
that Nixon committed a crime "by directing or authorizing [intelligence]
agencies or personnel to conduct or continue electronic surveillance or
other investigations for purposes unrelated to national security, the
enforcement of laws, or any other lawful function of his office."

There was no national security justification for Bush's illegal NSA wiretaps
-- which could easily have been instituted by following the FISA law's
provisions -- and, instead of being related to "enforcement of laws," Bush's
eavesdropping was indisputably in contravention of the law of the land.

And when a president commits a crime in violation of his oath of office
swearing to uphold the law, it is time to impeach. 

Doug Ireland writes the blog, Direland
<http://direland.typepad.com/direland/> . 

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