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We eavesdropped on the bad guys! Oh, my! -- Part 6
(Click here to see all of my posts in this series.)
Looks like it won't be hard to keep this series going for quite a while. Maybe eventually I can post that they just hung the treasonous bastards that leaked important secrets to the al-NYT to begin with.
John Hinderaker:
A Really Obvious Point
... [T]here are a couple of fundamental points that, while obvious, haven't been made often enough.
First, those who leap to the conclusion that the intercepts must be unconstitutional seem to assume that all searches require a warrant. That is not correct. The Fourth Amendment prohibits "unreasonable" searches and seizures. Warrantless searches are legal, and appropriately so, in a number of circumstances.
Second, the issue of speed is critical. When we capture a cell phone or laptop being used by a terrorist, it is usually because we captured or killed the terrorist. The amount of time we have to exploit the capture is very short. The terrorists will soon figure out that their confederate is out of business, and stop using his cell phone numbers and email addresses. So if we are to benefit from the capture, we must begin obtaining information right now.
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Michelle Malkin:
NSA And The Law: What The Times Didn't Print
There's a wealth of new information and debate in the blogosphere on the NSA special collections program, including non-Bush-bashing independent legal opinions that the NYTimes, unsurprisingly, had no time and space to see fit to print--even after an extra year of research (or whatever they were doing) on the story.
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WSJ Opinion Journal:
Thank You for Wiretapping
Why the Founders made presidents dominant on national security.
Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold wants to be President, and that's fair enough. By all means go for it in 2008. The same applies to Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who's always on the Sunday shows fretting about the latest criticism of the Bush Administration's prosecution of the war on terror. But until you run nationwide and win, Senators, please stop stripping the Presidency of its Constitutional authority to defend America.
That is the real issue raised by the Beltway furor over last week's leak of National Security Agency wiretaps on international phone calls involving al Qaeda suspects. The usual assortment of Senators and media potentates is howling that the wiretaps are "illegal," done "in total secret," and threaten to bring us a long, dark night of fascism. "I believe it does violate the law," averred Mr. Feingold on CNN Sunday.
The truth is closer to the opposite. What we really have here is a perfect illustration of why America's Founders gave the executive branch the largest measure of Constitutional authority on national security. They recognized that a committee of 535 talking heads couldn't be trusted with such grave responsibility. There is no evidence that these wiretaps violate the law. But there is lots of evidence that the Senators are "illegally" usurping Presidential power--and endangering the country in the process.
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Walid Phares:
Catch them, but do not watch them!..
Spying on al Qaida in America
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During wartime, the military engages in searches and surveillance without a warrant. We do not, for example, require the armed forces to seek a warrant when it conducts visual or electronic surveillance of enemy forces or of a battlefield, or when it searches buildings, houses, and vehicles for the enemy. Nor must military operations within the United States operate under a different rule.
The question is clear: Are we or are we not at war with the terrorists? Osama bin Laden declared that war in 1998. The bipartisan 9/11 Commission wondered why the previous administration refused to do so and the incumbent held off until October 2001. The jihadists are present within the U.S., including those who carry U.S. passports. So are other terror jihadists in Spain, Britain, Holland, or France. By pure rationale, the U.S. government has the duty to use all means (approved by war conventions) to resist the penetration and infiltration of the United States. Doing otherwise is unlawful, unconstitutional, and more importantly to the detriment of the security, and therefore the liberty of the American people. But regardless of any general legal argument, attorney John Yoo provides us with a technical legal provision. He writes: Therefore, if al-Qaeda forces organize and carry out missions to attack civilian or military targets within the United States, government surveillance of terrorists would not be law enforcement so much as military operations. In such circumstances, when the government is not pursuing an ordinary criminal law enforcement objective, the Fourth Amendment requires no search warrant.
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Byron York:
Why Bush Approved the Wiretaps
Not long ago, both parties agreed the FISA court was a problem.
At his news conference this morning, the president explained that he believed the U.S. government had to "be able to act fast" to intercept the "international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda." "Al Qaeda was not a conventional enemy," Bush said. "This new threat required us to think and act differently."
But there's more to the story than that. In 2002, when the president made his decision, there was widespread, bipartisan frustration with the slowness and inefficiency of the bureaucracy involved in seeking warrants from the special intelligence court, known as the FISA court. Even later, after the provisions of the Patriot Act had had time to take effect, there were still problems with the FISA court — problems examined by members of the September 11 Commission — and questions about whether the court can deal effectively with the fastest-changing cases in the war on terror.
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James S. Robbins
Unwarranted Outrage
The Times blew our cover.
I have no doubt that revelations in the New York Times that the NSA has been conducting selective and limited surveillance of terrorist communications crossing into or out of the United States will be immensely valuable to our enemies. I also have no doubt that these and similar actions can be legal, even when conducted without warrants.
How could that be? From the sound and fury of the last few days from politicians and pundits, you would think this is a development as scandalous as Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy's authorization to wiretap Martin Luther King Jr. But the legality of the acts can be demonstrated with a look through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). For example, check out section 1802, "Electronic Surveillance Authorization Without Court Order." It is most instructive. There you will learn that "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" (emphasis mine).
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