Associated Press:
At issue is how the secret panel of judges will consider evidence when approving government requests to monitor suspected al-Qaida agents' phone calls and e-mails between the United States and other countries.
Until last week, the National Security Agency conducted the surveillance without a court warrant. But the Justice Department announced Wednesday that the FISA court, as it is known, began overseeing the program with a Jan. 10 order.
Gonzales, testifying Thursday front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he may not be able to release details of the order.
So it's all different now, but how it's different, exactly, is a secret. I should've checked in with Glenn Greenwald right off the bat. He looks at what little we know and, through the process of elimination, divines only two possibilities.
Unclaimed Territory (the emphasis on what I believe is an important point is mine):
But ultimately, there are only two options -- (1) the administration is now complying fully and exclusively with FISA when eavesdropping, in which case all of its prior claims that it could not do so and still fight against The Terrorists are false, or (2) the administration has changed its eavesdropping program some, but it is still not fully complying with FISA, in which case nothing of significance has changed (at least on the lawbreaking issues) because the administration is still violating the law.
The FISA court and the administration cannot reach an agreement for proceeding that deviates from the FISA law itself. So it is only one or the other of the two options, neither of which reflect well on the administration.
So, is it an actual compliance with the law or is it PR bullshit? Taking my clues from this administration's past, I have to say it's probably the latter.
Then again, I'd be more than happy to be proven wrong. But the administration seems unwilling to actually prove anything. Back to the AP article:
Gonzales, testifying Thursday front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said he may not be able to release details of the order.
"Are you saying that you might object to the court giving us a decision that you publicly announced?" committee chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., asked. "Are we Alice in Wonderland here?"
Responding, Gonzales said it was "not my decision to make."
"There is going to be information about operational details about how we're doing this that we want to keep confidential," he said.
In other words, senators may be al Qaeda operatives or something. If the administration were really in compliance with FISA, there'd be no secret -- anyone can read the damned law and see exactly what they must be doing.
Here's what I see happening before us. The Bush administration knows that the new congress is going to investigate the warrantless wiretaps. They also know that the program's illegal and, of all the investigations the may go on, investigation of FISA violations is probably the most likely to turn up actual, honest to goodness crimes. So they pre-empt congress by 'changing' their program, but -- oops! -- they can't tell anyone what those changes actually are. They hope to hide behind national security to create a dead end.
Tags: news | politics | Bush | congress | crime | FISA | surveillance | spying | Alberto Gonzales | wiretaps
