[Dialogue] Bush's Snoopgate

[Harry Wainwright]

Colleagues, here it is all laid out for us. Peace, Harry 
  _____  




Published on Tuesday, December 20, 2005 by Newsweek
<http://www.msnbc.msn.com>  

Bush's Snoopgate
The president was so desperate to kill The New York Times'; eavesdropping
story, he summoned the paper's editor and publisher to the Oval Office. But
it wasn't just out of concern about national security.



by Jonathan Alter 

Finally we have a Washington scandal that goes beyond sex, corruption and
political intrigue to big issues like security versus liberty and the
reasonable bounds of presidential power. President Bush came out swinging on
Snoopgate-he made it seem as if those who didn't agree with him wanted to
leave us vulnerable to Al Qaeda-but it will not work. We're seeing clearly
now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator, or in
his own mind, no doubt, like Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. 

No wonder Bush was so desperate that The New York Times not publish its
story on the National Security Agency eavesdropping on American citizens
without a warrant, in what lawyers outside the administration say is a clear
violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. I learned this
week that on December 6, Bush summoned Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and
executive editor Bill Keller to the Oval Office in a futile attempt to talk
them out of running the story. The Times will not comment on the meeting,
but one can only imagine the president's desperation. 

The problem was not that the disclosures would compromise national security,
as Bush claimed at his press conference. His comparison to the damaging
pre-9/11 revelation of Osama bin Laden's use of a satellite phone, which
caused bin Laden to change tactics, is fallacious; any Americans with ties
to Muslim extremists-in fact, all American Muslims, period-have long since
suspected that the U.S. government might be listening in to their
conversations. Bush claimed that "the fact that we are discussing this
program is helping the enemy." But there is simply no evidence, or even
reasonable presumption, that this is so. And rather than the leaking being a
"shameful act," it was the work of a patriot inside the government who was
trying to stop a presidential power grab. 

No, Bush was desperate to keep the Times from running this important
story-which the paper had already inexplicably held for a year-because he
knew that it would reveal him as a law-breaker. He insists he had "legal
authority derived from the Constitution and congressional resolution
authorizing force." But the Constitution explicitly requires the president
to obey the law. And the post 9/11 congressional resolution authorizing "all
necessary force" in fighting terrorism was made in clear reference to
military intervention. It did not scrap the Constitution and allow the
president to do whatever he pleased in any area in the name of fighting
terrorism. 

What is especially perplexing about this story is that the 1978 law set up a
special court to approve eavesdropping in hours, even minutes, if necessary.
In fact, the law allows the government to eavesdrop on its own, then
retroactively justify it to the court, essentially obtaining a warrant after
the fact. Since 1979, the FISA court has approved tens of thousands of
eavesdropping requests and rejected only four. There was no indication the
existing system was slow-as the president seemed to claim in his press
conference-or in any way required extra-constitutional action. 

This will all play out eventually in congressional committees and in the
United States Supreme Court. If the Democrats regain control of Congress,
there may even be articles of impeachment introduced. Similar abuse of power
was part of the impeachment charge brought against Richard Nixon in 1974. 

In the meantime, it is unlikely that Bush will echo President Kennedy in
1961. After JFK managed to tone down a New York Times story by Tad Szulc on
the Bay of Pigs invasion, he confided to Times editor Turner Catledge that
he wished the paper had printed the whole story because it might have spared
him such a stunning defeat in Cuba. 

This time, the president knew publication would cause him great
embarrassment and trouble for the rest of his presidency. It was for that
reason-and less out of genuine concern about national security-that George
W. Bush tried so hard to kill the New York Times story. 

C 2005 Newsweek, Inc. 

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