Dems to call for Impeachment?
MSNBC/Newsweek
Bush's Snoopgate
By Jonathan Alter
Newsweek
Updated: 6:17 p.m. ET Dec. 19, 2005
Dec. 19, 2005 - 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.
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
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