Using Illegal Wiretapping and Spying Activity

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/editorials/157

Bush Administration Has Been Using Illegal Wiretapping and Spying Activity for Political Purposes. Doubt It?
Submitted by mark karlin on Mon, 08/20/2007
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

In an under covered trial in a California courtroom, a Constitutional drama of major significance is unfolding.

It is a federal lawsuit filed by Americans who claim that the Bush Administration, with the cooperation of AT&T, illegally spied on them. The Bush Administration has taken the Orwellian position that the trial must not be allowed to proceed because it would require the White House to reveal if they indeed have illegally monitored the plaintiffs – and that, the Bush Politburo argues, would violate "state secrets."

Why do we sometimes think that we are living in the Soviet-era, Stasi run East Germany?

Maybe that’s because a headline last week read, "US moves to use spy satellites for domestic surveillance."

Or maybe, returning to the trial in California, that the White House refused to sign a document assuring the court that their "eavesdropping" was not being used domestically under the guise of claiming it was being used to stop terrorism:

But the 9th Circuit judges were skeptical. They wondered why at least one key issue cannot be explored -- whether there was domestic spying on Americans without court approval, which civil liberties lawyers say violates the law.

Judges Margaret McKeown and Michael Daly Hawkins, both Clinton appointees, cited public comments by President Bush and other administration officials denying any such warrantless domestic surveillance, and asked the government why it can't provide similar statements under oath in the court case.

McKeown, who stressed that she didn't expect Bush himself to provide the sworn statements, questioned how such evidence would jeopardize national security.

And when an AT&T lawyer later told the judges that Bush has already issued denials publicly, Hawkins said that public statements aren't the equivalent of statements under oath in court or in court declarations.

"No court in the land would be satisfied with public statements, be it the president of the United States or the president of AT&T," Hawkins said.

In short, we once again have the White House playing the game of we’ll talk with you, but we won’t testify under oath because then you can legally charge us with perjury because, of course, we’re going to lie.

But this is about spying on American citizens.

Reaching back into the recesses of our memory, we recall that in one of Alberto Gonzales’s farcical appearances before Congress – when the FISA illegal eavesdropping first broke in The New York Times (after they sat on the story for a year) – Gonzales was asked if the spying might have been used for domestic purposes other than terrorism. Gonzales responded, in essence, that he couldn’t say for sure.

In a recent BuzzFlash editorial, we noted that the acquisition of domestic spying powers for political purposes was one of three key strategies in the Republican effort to achieve long-term control of the United States apparatus of government.

With domestic spying powers just recently legally expanded by a Democratic Congress to include, according to The New York Times, certain types of physical searches on American soil and the collection of Americans' business records, the Bush Administration now has legal authority to achieve what Nixon attempted to do illegally in the Watergate burglary.

And if the Democratic Party were to sue over a modern day Watergate-style operation, the Bush Administration would tell the court that it can’t reveal why it conducted the spying operation on a political party because it would violate national security.

This is not BuzzFlash idle speculation; it is what the Bush Administration, now enabled by the lack of caucus discipline in a Democratic Congress, has achieved.

God help us all.