posted on December 19, 2005 07:49:19 PM new
Time to clean house of these anti-American, communist-loving leftists.
Traitors of Record: The Record of the New York Times
By Fedora
“. . .the most untrustworthy paper in the United States. . .”
--President Dwight Eisenhower, referring to the New York Times
Introduction
Last week Senator John Cornyn criticized the New York Times for endangering national security with a James Risen story on NSA surveillance timed to coincide with a vote on the Patriot Act and, incidentally, with the release of a book by Risen. A review of the record illustrates that endangering national security through irresponsible leaks is nothing new for the New York Times. Some particularly outrageous examples are worth recalling here to underscore why action against the New York Times is long overdue.
Background: A Failed Housecleaning
It is well known that the Times has been criticized for failing to whole-heartedly repudiate the reporting of Walter Duranty, who has been dubbed “Stalin’s Apologist” for echoing Soviet propaganda throughout the 1920s and 1930s. Less often discussed is the fact that Duranty’s reporting was not an isolated case at the Times.
At the turn of the 20th century publisher Adolph Ochs had gained his controlling interest in the Times with financial assistance from Jacob Schiff of the banking firm Kuhn Loeb. Schiff was a key financier of pre-Soviet Marxism in the US as well as the Bolshevik revolutionaries in Russia. Schiff and Ochs cofounded the Henry Street Settlement, which became an early center of Marxist and Soviet activity in the US.
Ochs was succeeded as Times publisher in 1935 by Arthur Hays Sulzberger. Sulzberger had sympathized with the Communist cause as a youth, but gradually drifted towards anti-Communism as the Cold War approached. In the process he became concerned about the Communist Party’s efforts to infiltrate the Times through the American Newspaper Guild, whose New York local was dominated by Communists.
The American Newspaper Guild attempted to purge Communist elements in 1948, but this effort was only partially successful. After the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee (SISS) began an investigation of Communist infiltration of the newspaper industry, the exposure of a cell that included Times reporter Clayton Knowles prompted the Times to begin conducting an internal probe in 1954. The probe and SISS investigation resulted in the firing of Times copyeditor Melvin Barnet. SISS ended up calling 30 witnesses from the Times to testify in December 1955 hearings.
To what extent these attempts to purge Communist elements from the Times were successful is unknown. But what may be documented is that the Times has had a continuous record of compromising national security by leaking classified information from the late 1950s on.
Exhibit A: Compromising the U-2
Reporter Joseph Alsop started out the Cold War anti-Soviet. But he was careless with his sex life--to put it delicately--and while he was travelling to Moscow to cover a story, the KGB photographed him in a compromising position to try to blackmail him into working as a spy. Seeking a way out of the trap he had been lured into, Alsop went for help to his State Department friend Charles Bohlen, who was suspected by the FBI and Senate investigators of being similarly compromised. Some researchers have reported sources claiming that Bohlen was able to get friends in the CIA to help Alsop out of the situation. But other information suggests there was more to the story.
In early 1960 Alsop wrote a story for the New York Times hinting at US knowledge of secret Soviet missile developments. This story came in the midst of an election-year debate over whether the Eisenhower administration’s fiscally-conservative defense policies had allowed a “missile gap” to open by letting Soviet technology outpace US progress. President Eisenhower knew from U-2 surveillance that in fact the US remained well ahead of the Soviets and there was no missile gap, but he could not publicly reveal this without compromising the top-secret U-2 program. Alsop was friends with the CIA agent in charge of the U-2 program, Richard Bissell, and the information in Alsop’s story on Soviet missile developments was based on information generated by U-2 surveillance. Eisenhower could not refute Alsop’s intimation of a missile gap without exposing the U-2 program in the process. The resulting “missile gap” stigma played a significant role in swinging the 1960 election to John Kennedy.
Eisenhower was normally noted for his calm temperament and slowness to anger, and it took a great deal to make him lose his temper. But when he saw Alsop’s article, he reportedly “exploded”. As Eisenhower biographer Stephen Ambrose records, one of Eisenhower’s associates noted that “the President is extremely angry and has talked at length about the lack of loyalty to the U.S. of these people. In his estimation Joseph Alsop is about the lowest form of animal life on earth. . .” On another occasion Eisenhower called the Times “the most untrustworthy paper in the United States”.
Exhibit B: Sabotaging the Bay of Pigs
A year after Alsop’s article, the Times published an article by Tad Szulc exposing the CIA’s plan for an upcoming attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro by inserting an invasion force into Cuba at the Bay of Pigs.
During Castro’s rise to power in the 1950s he had been supported by Times reporter Herbert Matthews, who had previously given sympathetic coverage to the Communist side during the Spanish Civil War. Castro’s ascent was also supported by a left-wing faction in the State Department, which continually interfered with the CIA’s planning for the Bay of Pigs operation, advising Kennedy to make various tactically-stupid changes including calling off air strikes that were crucial to the success of the operation. One of Castro’s State Department sympathizers, Chester Bowles, decided to sabotage the Bay of Pigs operation by leaking the invasion plan to the press.
Through contacts in the Cuban exile community, the invasion plan came to the attention of Szulc. Szulc had been suspected by US intelligence of being a foreign agent since 1948, when an FBI file identified him as a Communist. In 1959 the CIA also became suspicious of him when he falsely claimed clearance in an attempt to obtain classified information. Later in the 1970s the FBI would observe him in contact with a KGB agent, and the CIA would link his daughter to Cuban spy Philip Agee.
Szulc’s article on the Bay of Pigs operation was published in the New York Times on April 7, 1961, less than two weeks before the planned invasion. Although Szulc’s supervisors forced him to delete some information on national security grounds at the request of CIA Director Allen Dulles, they allowed him to publish the story over the objections of both Dulles and the Times’ own Washington bureau chief James Reston, and they allowed the final draft of the article to include a reference to a CBS News report which mentioned the deleted information.
To keep things in perspective, it should be noted that the failure of the Bay of Pigs was ultimately more due to the State Department’s interference with the air strikes than to Szulc’s article. But Szulc and the Times certainly did their share to help keep Castro in power.
Exhibit C: Helping the Vietcong
In December 1966 Times reporter Harrison Salisbury became the first American journalist allowed in North Vietnam. Salisbury has previously been the Times’ Soviet correspondent. His entry to North Vietnam was arranged by Wilfred Burchett, an Australian journalist who worked for the KGB and for the pro-Vietcong news outlet Dispatch News Service.
Dispatch News Service had been founded by the Marxist think tank the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), linked to Soviet and Cuban intelligence. IPS financier Philip Stern also funded the Fund for Investigative Journalism, which paid for upcoming reporter Seymour Hersh to research allegations of atrocities committed by US soldiers at My Lai. Hersh’s My Lai story was provided by Dispatch News to the New York Times.
The Times’ coverage of My Lai inspired the European-based Soviet front group the International War Crimes Tribunal, whose conferences Burchett had attended, to launch an American arm of its investigation. The Tribunal’s call for an American investigation led to what became the Vietnam Veterans Against the War’s Winter Soldier investigation, which prompted the Senate hearings that propelled John Kerry to fame. (Later as Senator Kerry would hire former Dispatch News Service bureau chief Gareth Porter to be his legislative aide.)
After running Hersh’s My Lai story and covering Kerry’s war crimes allegations, the Times and IPS helped Pentagon consultant Daniel Ellsberg leak The Pentagon Papers, a selectively-edited account of US policy in Vietnam calculated to discredit the US war effort. In addition to damaging the US war effort, The Pentagon Papers also had a double effect, for in an effort to counter Ellsberg’s propaganda efforts, the White House staff authorized a series of illegal surveillance actions that ultimately led to the Watergate scandal and President Nixon’s resignation.
Exhibit D: Undermining American Counterintelligence Capability
In the wake of Watergate, the Times and liberal elements in the CIA capitalized on the scandal by using it as a pretext to push for a reorganization of the intelligence community along liberal lines. This push was triggered by a leak from CIA Director William Colby to Seymour Hersh, which resulted in a December 22, 1974 New York Times article titled “Huge C.I.A. Operation Reported in U.S. Against Anti-War Forces”. Although there was a real story of actual abuses to be told here, Hersh’s article and follow-up allegations later proved exaggerated. But Hersh’s article served Colby’s purpose. Colby used the leak to force the resignation of counterintelligence veteran James Angleton, the bastion of hard-line anti-Communism in the CIA. Meanwhile Congressional contacts of the antiwar movement called for investigations into Hersh’s allegations. These investigations culminated in the recommendation of sweeping reforms of the intelligence community.
The implementation of these “reforms” over 1976 and 1977 took the form of a systematic stripping of US counterintelligence capability. This included abolishing Congressional and Department of Justice bodies assigned to monitor subversive activity, eliminating the internal security branch of the FBI's intelligence division, and dismissing several hundred of the CIA’s experts on Communism. Antiwar leaders such as Ramsey Clark tried to push this even further by promoting legislation which would have virtually eliminated the FBI, but this effort failed.
Historians of the intelligence community have traced a direct line from these so-called reforms to the intelligence community’s failure to prevent the 9/11 attacks. And it is not hard to see how Hersh’s allegation of the CIA’s domestic spying operations stands as a prototype for James Risen’s allegation of NSA domestic spying operations. The Times is up to its old tricks again.
Conclusion
An exhaustive list of instances when the New York Times has endangered national security over the past half century would take many more pages, but the point has been made. Enough is enough. The Times’ blatant subversion of the United States under the guise of a twisted interpretation of the Constitutional right to free speech needs to end. The Constitutional guarantee to freedom of speech depends first and foremost on the existence of the United States, and that existence is now being jeopardized by an Orwellian rag run by morally warped propagandists who think betraying their country is a badge of honor and who will stoop to any depth of deceit in order to sidestep whatever laws or constitutional processes stand in the way of their unelected agenda. Our Constitution makes room for three branches of government. It delegates no authority whatsoever to a fourth estate, much less a fifth column. It’s time for our elected officials and the American people to tell the Times that time is up.
"“More Iraqis think things are going well in Iraq than Americans do. I guess they don’t get the New York Times over there.”—Jay Leno".
posted on December 19, 2005 08:32:52 PM new
Apparently some need a reminder. "“More Iraqis think things are going well in Iraq than Americans do. I guess they don’t get the New York Times over there.”—Jay Leno".
posted on December 19, 2005 09:32:41 PM new
Thanks for sharing this article bear.
It's frightening to me, sincerely, that so many get their news from the NYT and believe every word they print.
helen has even stated over and over that the she doesn't think the NYT is a liberal paper.
And I don't mean that as an attack on her...but rather that so many think the way she does...believes the anti-American actions of those who wish to hurt our country...no matter what 'war' we're fighting. They're not on our side...and that saddens me beyond words.
posted on December 21, 2005 03:59:41 PM new"It's frightening to me, sincerely, that so many get their news from the NYT and believe every word they print."
Any more frightening than all the people who get their news from FOX News, and believe every word of it?
posted on December 21, 2005 11:58:08 PM newnerf...Any more frightening than all the people who get their news from FOX News, and believe every word of it?
Yep...sure it. At least the Fox News Network is PRO-American....so unlike the NYT who doesn't have America's best interests at heart.
So yes, I'd call that a SUBSTANTIAL difference.
----------------
Colin. Excellent, excellent article showing the ACLU for just what they are....VERY anti-America's best interest. I've tried to point that out here several times to their supporters here. But in all honesty I think THAT particular article is the BEST summation of their anti-American policies I've ever seen written in ONE place, one article. Three cheers to it's author...for bringing some 'light' onto their activities.
posted on December 22, 2005 02:09:54 AM new
Live and let spy
By Ann Coulter
Dec 21, 2005
Apart from the day the New York Times goes out of business – and the stellar work Paul Krugman's column does twice a week helping people house-train their puppies – the newspaper has done the greatest thing it will ever do in its entire existence. (Calm down: No, the Times didn't hold an intervention for Frank Rich.)
Monday's Times carried a major expose on child molesters who use the Internet to lure their adolescent prey into performing sex acts for webcams. In the course of investigating the story, reporter Kurt Eichenwald broke open a massive network of pedophiles, rescued a young man who had been abused for years and led the Department of Justice to hundreds of child molesters.
I kept waiting for the catch, but apparently the Times does not yet believe pedophilia is covered by the "privacy right." They should stop covering politics and start covering more stories like this.
In order to report the story, the Times said it obtained:
copies of online conversations and e-mail messages between minors and the creepy adults;
records of payments to the minors;
membership lists for webcam sites;
defunct sites stored in online archives;
files retained on a victim's computer over several years;
financial records, credit card processing data and other information;
The Neverland Ranch's mailing list. (OK, I made that last one up.)
Would that the Times allowed the Bush administration similar investigative powers for Islamofacists in America!
Which brings me to this week's scandal about No Such Agency spying on "Americans." I have difficulty ginning up much interest in this story inasmuch as I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East and sending liberals to Guantanamo.
But if we must engage in a national debate on half-measures: After 9-11, any president who was not spying on people calling phone numbers associated with terrorists should be impeached for being an inept commander in chief.
With a huge gaping hole in lower Manhattan, I'm not sure why we have to keep reminding people, but we are at war. (Perhaps it's because of the media blackout on images of the 9-11 attack. We're not allowed to see those because seeing planes plowing into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon might make us feel angry and jingoistic.)
Among the things that war entails are: killing people (sometimes innocent), destroying buildings (sometimes innocent) and spying on people (sometimes innocent).
That is why war is a bad thing. But once a war starts, it is going to be finished one way or another, and I have a preference for it coming out one way rather than the other.
In previous wars, the country has done far worse than monitor telephone calls placed to jihad headquarters. FDR rounded up Japanese – many of them loyal American citizens – and threw them in internment camps. Most appallingly, at the same time, he let New York Times editors wander free.
Note the following about the Japanese internment:
The Supreme Court upheld the president's authority to intern the Japanese during wartime;
That case, Korematsu v. United States, is still good law;
There are no Japanese internment camps today. (Although the no-limit blackjack section at Caesar's Palace on a Saturday night comes pretty close.)
It's one or the other: Either we take the politically correct, scattershot approach and violate everyone's civil liberties, or we focus on the group threatening us and – in the worst-case scenario – run the risk of briefly violating the civil liberties of 1,000 people in a country of 300 million.
Of course, this is assuming I'm talking to people from the world of the normal. In the Democrats' world, there are two more options. Violate no one's civil liberties and get used to a lot more 9-11s, or the modified third option, preferred by Sen. John D. Rockefeller: Let the president do all the work and take all the heat for preventing another terrorist attack while you place a letter expressing your objections in a file cabinet as a small parchment tribute to your exquisite conscience.
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Find this story at: http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/anncoulter/2005/12/21/180063.html
posted on December 22, 2005 08:09:33 AM new
Anyone seen this GREAT SUCCESS article about what our troops found on the 20th in Iraq printed in the New York Times?????
This just proves to me that there STILL is a chance saddam's womd will be found...someday.
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December 20, 2005
Huge weapons cache found
By Ryan Lenz
Associated Press
ZUWAD KHALAF, Iraq — As the piles of missiles and rockets dug from the desert floor grew, smiles on soldiers' faces turned to scowls of serious concern.
Working on a tip from an informant, soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division on Tuesday dug up more than a thousand aging rockets and missiles wrapped in plastic, some of which had been buried as recently as two weeks ago, Army officials said.
"This is the mother lode, right here," Sgt. Jeremy Galusha, 25, of Dallas, Ore., said, leaning on a shovel after uncovering more than 20 Soviet missiles.
As the sun set Tuesday, soldiers continued to uncover more, following zigzagging tire tracks across the desert floor and using metal detectors to locate weapons including mines, mortars and machine gun rounds.
But the growing piles of missiles and rockets were of primary concern for the soldiers in Iraq, where bombs made with loose ordinance by insurgents are the preferred method to target coalition forces.
"In our eyes, every one of these rockets represents one less IED," said 2nd Lt. Patrick Vardaro, 23, of Norwood, Mass., a platoon leader in the division's 187th Infantry Regiment.
Vardaro would not comment on whether there were signs the caches had been used recently to make bombs, but the service records accompanying the missiles dated to 1984, suggesting they were buried by the Iraqi military under Saddam Hussein.
Still, the plastic around some of the rockets — of Soviet, German and French origins — appeared to be fresh and had not deteriorated as it had on some of the older munitions.
An Air Force explosive ordinance team planned to begin destroying them as early as Wednesday morning.
Commanders in the 101st said knowing that an Iraqi tipped them off to the buried weapons could mean that residents in this largely Sunni Arab region about 150 miles north of Baghdad are beginning to warm up to coalition forces. "The tide is turning," Vardaro said. "It's better to work with Americans than against us."
Army officials would not say who had informed them of the weapons caches or whether national security forces including Iraqi Army and police had helped.
"A good Samaritan told us about it," he said.
posted on December 22, 2005 08:17:25 AM new
Ha ha! "Still, the plastic around some of the rockets — of Soviet, German and French origins — appeared to be fresh and had not deteriorated as it had on some of the older munitions."""
""", some of which had been buried as recently as two weeks ago, Army officials said."""
posted on December 22, 2005 08:30:58 AM new
Is that the way you THINK you show support for your country and our troops????
Or maybe you just agreeing the saddam supporters planted these.
Let me guess whose side you're on.
mingotree/crowfarm - posted on December 20, 2005 "Ya but linda, I'M the nasty atheist, scummy LIBERAL and YOU are the enlightened "christian"?? How quickly you lower yourself to my level.
posted on December 22, 2005 02:38:24 PM newLinda_K......At least the Fox News Network is PRO-American....so unlike the NYT who doesn't have America's best interests at heart. So yes, I'd call that a SUBSTANTIAL difference.
In WWII Germany they called people with that line of thinking, "Nazi supporters".
Just because you were born here and live here doesn't mean your government is always right.
If you were a true patriot, you would be the first to object to such Anti-American activities as spying on American citizens illegally, instead of blindly supporting any and everything your government does or says.
posted on December 22, 2005 04:25:03 PM new
Dingo, not even you could dense enough to suggest American troops "planted" the new munitions......On second thought, yes you could be that dense.
"“More Iraqis think things are going well in Iraq than Americans do. I guess they don’t get the New York Times over there.”—Jay Leno".
posted on December 22, 2005 05:25:51 PM new
"If you were a true patriot, you would be the first to object to such Anti-American activities as spying on American citizens illegally, instead of blindly supporting any and everything your government does or says."
The illegally of this "spying” is conjecture at the moment.
It's the leftist AH's that are pointing the finger at the right and saying "my Country, Right or Wrong" just like they did back in the Nam era.
Amen,
Reverend Colin http://www.reverendcolin.com
Fox affiliate “FOX Carolina” last month ran a one-sided fluff piece favorably exploring an online hub for white supremacists. The reporter who did the piece was named South Carolina broadcaster's Association 2005 reporter of the year.
posted on December 22, 2005 05:57:56 PM newcolin..."The illegality of this "spying” is conjecture at the moment."
It's not conjecture. The NSA is forbidden from spying on any American without a FISA warrant. Bush never bothered with a warrant and acknowledged as much.
posted on December 23, 2005 08:23:37 AM new
Sorry nerf, but you are incorrect. This President is acting/using the same special provisions given to our President's under our Constitution.
He has broken NO laws and is well within the rights Presidents have. He is using those special 'righs' to do EXACTLY as presidents carter and clinton did. Exactly.
No matter what the NYT or anyother left leaning MSM may be saying.
posted on December 23, 2005 02:25:57 PM new
Incorrect. Clinton, Carter, (and of course Bush 1 and Reagan) All secured FISA warrants before using the NSA to spy on Americans, because to do otherwise would be illegal. Bush didn't see the need to follow the law, because he thinks he is King, not President.
posted on December 23, 2005 02:39:00 PM new
Taken from the WSJ, yesterday...and I will include the links.
By JAMES TARANTO
Dems: Hear No Evil
John Schmidt, who served as an assistant attorney general during the Clinton administration, weighs in with a Chicago Tribune op-ed on the wiretapping kerfuffle:
President Bush's post- Sept. 11, 2001, authorization to the National Security Agency to carry out electronic surveillance into private phone calls and e-mails is consistent with court decisions and with the positions of the Justice Department under prior presidents. . . .
In the Supreme Court's 1972 Keith decision holding that the president does not have inherent authority to order wiretapping without warrants to combat domestic threats, the court said explicitly that it was not questioning the president's authority to take such action in response to threats from abroad.
Four federal courts of appeal subsequently faced the issue squarely and held that the president has inherent authority to authorize wiretapping for foreign intelligence purposes without judicial warrant.
In the most recent judicial statement on the issue, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, composed of three federal appellate court judges, said in 2002 that "All the . . . courts to have decided the issue held that the president did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence . . . We take for granted that the president does have that authority."
The New York Times reports on one of those cases:
A Federal appeals court has ruled that the National Security Agency may lawfully intercept messages between United States citizens and people overseas, even if there is no cause to believe the Americans are foreign agents, and then provide summaries of these messages to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
This article appeared Nov. 7, 1982, and is reprinted by Newsbusters.org.
But last week the Times was shocked, shocked to learn that the NSA was spying on al Qaeda. The Drudge Report notes that both President Carter and President Clinton signed executive orders providing for warrantless searches.
This is looking increasingly like another effort by hostile journalists to gin up a fake scandal and discredit the administration. And once again, Democrats are falling for it.
From the Associated Press:
Domestic spying authorized by the White House "doesn't uphold our Constitution" and President Bush offered a "lame" defense in recent public appearances, Sen. John Kerry[*] said Tuesday.
The [haughty, French-looking] Massachusetts Democrat, who [by the way served in Vietnam and] lost to Bush in the 2004 presidential election, also said the alleged White House leak of a CIA agent's identity was more serious than the media's disclosure of the spying program.
This is proof, as if any were needed, that Kerry is not serious. Remember that in January 2004, Kerry described the war against terror as "primarily an intelligence and law-enforcement operation" rather than a military one. If he is to be believed--admittedly, a big "if"--a President Kerry would have been more concerned with terrorists' "rights" than with gathering intelligence to prevent terror attacks.
Some Democrats, less hinged than Kerry, are even using the I-word, presumably in part because they're still sore over Bill Clinton's impeachment. Almost every Democrat opposed Clinton's impeachment, which we guess tells us something about their view of proper presidential conduct:
Self-serving lies under oath are no big deal, but protecting Americans from terrorist attacks is unforgivable.
---
posted on December 23, 2005 02:53:04 PM new
Everything you site is in regards to terrorists; where do you see such support for spying on regular old dissidents?
posted on December 23, 2005 02:57:43 PM new
'Warrantless' searches not unprecedented
By Charles Hurt
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
December 22, 2005
Previous administrations, as well as the court that oversees national security cases, agreed with President Bush's position that a president legally may authorize searches without warrants in pursuit of foreign intelligence.
"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 he has done, delegate this authority to the attorney general," Clinton Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick said in 1994 testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
That same authority, she added, pertains to electronic surveillance such as wiretaps.
More recently, the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court -- the secretive judicial system that handles classified intelligence cases -- wrote in a declassified opinion that the court has long held "that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information."
Such warrantless searches have been at the center of a political fight in Washington after the New York Times reported Friday that the Bush administration had a program to intercept communications between al Qaeda suspects and persons in this country, a story whose publication coincided with the congressional debate over reauthorizing the USA Patriot Act.
In a 2002 opinion about the constitutionality of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the USA Patriot Act, the court wrote: "We take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President's constitutional power."
Indeed, previous administrations have used that same authority.
One of the most famous examples of warrantless searches in recent years was the investigation of CIA official Aldrich H. Ames, who ultimately pleaded guilty to spying for the former Soviet Union. That case was largely built upon secret searches of Ames' home and office in 1993, conducted without federal warrants.
In 1994, President Clinton expanded the use of warrantless searches to entirely domestic situations with no foreign intelligence value whatsoever. In a radio address promoting a crime-fighting bill, Mr. Clinton discussed a new policy to conduct warrantless searches in highly violent public housing projects.
Previous administrations also asserted the authority of the president to conduct searches in the interest of national security.
In 1978, for instance, Attorney General Griffin B. Bell testified before a federal judge about warrantless searches he and President Carter had authorized against two men suspected of spying on behalf of the Vietnam government.
That same year, Congress approved and Mr. Carter signed FISA, which created the secret court and required federal agents to get approval to conduct electronic surveillance in most foreign intelligence cases.
---
posted on December 23, 2005 03:16:05 PM new
So, imo this is just more of the same from the losing democrats....and NOTHING will come of it as it hasn't with everything else they've tried to 'make stick' to this President. He's covered under both the LAW and previous precedent.
The left leaning MSM which includes the NYT can continue spewing all there anti-American garbage they want to. Meanwhile THIS President is in charge and doing what HE believes is necessary to protect our Nation. Doing his job.
Only the far out lefties would be upset that terrorist suspects are being investigated by our Intelligence agencies. Just as bears article points out....as the NYT has ALWAYS done. shame shame on them for once again NOT being on America's side.
------------------
Former Clinton Official Contradicts Leahy on Spying
By Jeff Johnson
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
December 23, 2005
(CNSNews.com) -
Claims by a top Senate Democrat that the Clinton administration's warrantless surveillance of suspected spies and terrorists was different from what the Bush administration has employed are being contradicted by a former Justice Department official who served under President Bill Clinton.
John Schmidt, who served as associate attorney general between 1994 and 1997, argues that both Congress and the Supreme Court have recognized presidents' "inherent authority" to bypass warrants in ordering the eavesdropping of U.S. citizens suspected of conspiring with foreign governments or terrorists to injure or kill Americans.
On Wednesday, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, chided reporters for suggesting that Clinton ordered the same kinds of surveillance of U.S. citizens as Bush. Leahy claimed in a press conference that Clinton acted under an "entirely different power. "If you go back to Clinton and (President Jimmy) Carter, those are searches under a FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) provision into embassies, foreign embassies, things of that nature," Leahy argued. "It's an entirely different situation."
But in at least one well-documented case, Clinton authorized domestic electronic surveillance of a U.S. citizen without a warrant. FBI agents were allowed to break into the home of 31-year CIA veteran Aldrich Ames in 1993 to install eavesdropping devices.
An FBI summary of the case described it this way: "FBI Special Agents and Investigative Specialists conducted intensive physical and electronic surveillance of Ames during a ten-month investigation. Searches of Ames's residence revealed documents and other information linking Ames to the Russian foreign intelligence service."
The book "Main Justice: The Men and Women Who Enforce Our Nation's Criminal Laws and Guard Its Liberties," by The Washington Post's Jim McGee and U.S. News & World Report's Brian Duffy had much more detail.
"In the early morning hours of an autumn morning in 1993, an unmarked government sedan rolled slowly down an empty tree-lined street in Arlington. The FBI agents inside parked just up from a handsome two-story home. The agents knew the place well. Three months earlier, an FBI team had gone inside to bug the place. That operation had been a quick in and out. This time the agents planned to stay for a while. The owners were out of town on vacation. The house was vacant," the pair wrote. "With several hours to go before dawn, the FBI team slipped inside. They had with them the necessary equipment, but they did not have a warrant."
Though Ames's attorney initially planned to challenge the admissibility of the evidence collected through the warrantless searches and surveillance, Ames decided to plead guilty to espionage charges instead. He is serving life in prison without possibility of parole.
[b]Law provides exceptions for surveillance without court order
Warrantless searches to gather foreign intelligence information are not new. In fact, there is language justifying them in the FISA law Leahy referenced[/b].
The subchapter on electronic surveillance begins as follows: "Notwithstanding any other law, the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year if the Attorney General certifies in writing under oath" and if several other limiting conditions are met. Those conditions include that there be "no substantial likelihood that the surveillance will acquire the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party."
A "United States person" is defined by the law as "a citizen of the United States, an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence," and most associations and corporations, unless they are controlled by a foreign government or terrorist group.
Bush administration opponents have latched onto that limitation to condemn the White House's decision to bypass the federal courts and order the surveillance of calls and emails between U.S. citizens or lawful permanent aliens in the states and suspected terrorists or their supporters elsewhere.
"Requiring a judge to approve a wiretap is not a nicety that can be avoided by presidential decree -- it is a fundamental rule of American democracy," wrote Ann Beeson, associate legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, in a press statement. "The government ignored the system authorized by Congress in favor of limitless power to spy on Americans."
But one section of the statute seems to contradict Beeson's claim.
"[N]o contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party shall be disclosed, disseminated, or used for any purpose or retained for longer than 72 hours unless a court order under [FISA] is obtained or unless the Attorney General determines that the information indicates a threat of death or serious bodily harm to any person." (Emphasis added.)
Schmidt, writing in the Chicago TribuneThursday, hinted that Presidents Clinton and Bush both may have relied on the "death or serious bodily harm" exception.
"Electronic surveillance of communications to or from those who might plausibly be members of or in contact with Al Qaeda was probably the only means of obtaining information about what its members were planning next," Schmidt wrote, analyzing Bush's decision-making dilemma after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. "FISA does not anticipate a post-Sept. 11 situation."
A handful of congressional Democrats, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), have suggested that Bush could be subject to impeachment for his decision.
Republicans have dismissed those calls as political posturing. Other administration critics are threatening lawsuits to block similar surveillance in the future, but Schmidt doubts that tactic would be successful.
"What was needed after Sept. 11, according to the president, was surveillance beyond what could be authorized under that kind of individualized case-by-case judgment," Schmidt wrote. "It is hard to imagine the Supreme Court second-guessing that presidential judgment."
posted on December 23, 2005 03:18:07 PM new
Daschle: Congress Didn't OK Spying Authority
By Associated Press
Published December 23, 2005, 4:24 PM CST
WASHINGTON -- The use of warrantless wiretaps on American citizens was never discussed when Congress authorized the White House to use force against al-Qaida after the Sept. 11 attacks, says former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle.
In an article printed Friday on the op-ed page of The Washington Post, Daschle also wrote that Congress explicitly denied a White House request for war-making authority in the United States.
"This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas ... but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens," Daschle wrote.
"The Bush administration now argues those powers were inherently contained in the resolution adopted by Congress -- but at the time, the administration clearly felt they weren't or it wouldn't have tried to insert the additional language," the South Dakota Democrat wrote.
Daschle was Senate Democratic leader at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington. He is now a fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal Washington think tank.
The administration formally defended its domestic spying program in a letter to Congress late Thursday, saying the nation's security outweighs privacy concerns of individuals who are monitored.
In a letter to the chairs of the House and Senate intelligence committees, the Justice Department said President Bush authorized electronic surveillance without first obtaining a warrant in an effort to thwart terrorist acts against the United States.
"There is undeniably an important and legitimate privacy interest at stake with respect to the activities described by the president," wrote Assistant Attorney General William E. Moschella. "That must be balanced, however, against the government's compelling interest in the security of the nation."
Bush has acknowledged he authorized such surveillance and repeatedly has defended it in recent days.
But Moschella's letter was the administration's first public notice to Congress about the program in which electronic surveillance was conducted without the approval of a secret court created to examine requests for wiretaps and searches in the most sensitive terrorism and espionage cases.
Moschella maintained that Bush acted legally when he authorized the National Security Agency to go around the court to conduct electronic surveillance of international communications into and out of the United States by suspects tied to al-Qaida or its affiliates.
Moschella relied on a Sept. 18, 2001, congressional resolution, known as the Authorization to Use Military Force, as primary legal justification for Bush's creation of a domestic spying program. The resolution "clearly contemplates action within the United States," Moschella wrote, and acknowledges Bush's power to prevent terrorism against the United States.
Congress adopted the resolution in the chaotic days after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, authorizing the president to wage war against al-Qaida and other terrorist groups that pose a threat to the United States.
Moschella said the president's constitutional authority also includes power to order warrantless foreign intelligence surveillance inside the United States. He said that power has been affirmed by federal courts, including the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court. The FISA court was created in 1978 after public outcry over government spying on anti-war and civil rights protesters.
The administration deliberately bypassed the FISA court, which requires the government to provide evidence that a terrorism or espionage suspect is "an agent of a foreign power."
Moschella said Bush's action was legal because the foreign intelligence law provides a "broad" exception if the spying is authorized by another statute. In this case, he said, Congress' authorization provided such authority.
He also maintained the NSA program is "consistent" with the Fourth Amendment -- which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures -- and civil liberties.
For searches to be reasonable under law, a warrant is needed, Moschella said. But, outside criminal investigations, he said, the Supreme Court has created exceptions where warrants are not needed.
Absolute faith has been shown, consistently, to breed intolerance. And intolerance, history teaches us, again and again, begets violence.
---------------------------------- The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say 'No.'
posted on December 23, 2005 03:28:00 PM newLinda_K
I am truly sorry that you have a misunderstanding of the situation, but let me try to clarify.
THE NSA (not FBI, Justice Dept, cops, etc) are forbidden from domestic spying in their charter. It is illegal to order the NSA to do so.
(edited to add this)
Read up on the Church Committee, and the origin and purpose of FISA in regards to abuse of NSA spying.
[ edited by nerfballwillie on Dec 23, 2005 03:36 PM ]
posted on December 23, 2005 03:44:07 PM new
LOL.....he didn't get Daschle's okay on this? Most likely because Daschle LOST his seat....wasn't re-elected.
Doesn't mean the President didn't discuss it with other members of Congress has he said he did. Memory loss is going on to a GREAT degree with the dems it appears. LOL
posted on December 23, 2005 03:50:16 PM new
Oh no, nerf, I understand the situation QUITE clearly. This will be just ANOTHER in the long list of things some radical dems CLAIM this President has done wrong. And, imo, will go by the way-side like ALL the others have.
Mark my word.
But it does sadden me that you and others like you appear to be more worried about 30 US Citizens who are/were communicating with suspected terrorists in foreign countries than allowing ANY President to do what's necessary to prevent more attacks.
The reason MOST Americans won't vote in a dem President when we're at war. Can't be trusted, just like the NYT to be on America's side.
This too shall pass, along with all the others, because there will be enough 'common sense' dems who won't remove this special power from ANY President....especially in times of war.
posted on December 23, 2005 03:52:05 PM new
Bush's High Crimes
Choosing his words carefully, George W. Bush all but accused critics of his extralegal warrantless wiretaps of giving aid and comfort to Al Qaeda: "It was a shameful act, for someone to disclose this very important program in time of war. The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy." If so, the ranks of the treasonous now include leaders of the President's own party, and the New York Times's revelations of illegal wiretaps foretell an earthquake. Senator Lindsey Graham, last seen carrying gallons of water for the White House on the status of Guantánamo prisoners, will have nothing of Bush's end run around the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act: "Even in a time of war, you have to follow the process," he said flatly. An infuriated Arlen Specter, Senate Judiciary chairman, whose good will the White House depends on in the upcoming Supreme Court confirmation of Samuel Alito, declared the President's domestic spying "inexcusable...clearly and categorically wrong" and plans hearings.
For the generations who came of age after the mid-1970s, it is worth recalling why warrantless domestic surveillance so shocks the political system. It needs to be repeated that the same arguments cited by Bush--inherent presidential power and national security--sustained the wiretapping of Martin Luther King Jr., unleashed illegal CIA domestic spying and generated FBI files on thousands of American dissidents. It needs to be repeated that in 1974, the articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon included abuse of presidential power based on warrantless wiretaps and illegal surveillance. It needs to be repeated that a few months later, presidential aides named Cheney and Rumsfeld labored mightily to secure President Ford's veto of the Freedom of Information Act, in an unsuccessful attempt to turn back post-Watergate restrictions on homegrown spying and government secrecy.
Most of all it needs to be repeated that no constitutional clause gives the President "because I said so" authority. The fact that former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo tried to concoct a laughable fig leaf out of Congress's 9/11 use-of-force resolution in no way diminishes the President's culpability. Nor does the evident collusion of a handful of Senate leaders, including minority leader Harry Reid, who was evidently informed at least partly about the spying program
posted on December 23, 2005 04:14:23 PM new
You were SO correct when you said:
mingotree/crowfarm - posted on December 20, 2005 "Ya but linda, I'M the nasty atheist, scummy LIBERAL and YOU are the enlightened "christian"?? How quickly you lower yourself to my level.
