Bush Declares War

NYTimes.
Bush is asserting that his illegal spying on Americans is, in fact, legal, and has asked the Justice department to investigate leaks.

Perhaps some intrepid reporter will ask the President if he expects all White House personnell to cooperate with the investigation; whether or not he would fire anyone who was involved in leaking secret information; and if it his policy to fully disclose all information he has about people leaking to the press when the Justice Department asks for it, and to the American people.

In other words, all the quesetions they asked with regards to the Plame investigation, but which the White House equivocates on.

More importantly, demanding the Justice department to go into this indicates that he is through the looking glass; he is staking the territory that spying on Americans in the US without a court warrant is legal, and defensible.

The problem, of course, is that Bush knows that, on balance, what you can get away with is abusing power in a way which seems socially responsible. Example: Nixon's ordering people to lie to the Justice Department in investigating the Watergate break-in, bad; but if everyone thinks it's okay to follow hot phone trails, that's okay, even if he's breaking the law while doing it.

Another example: courts have, de facto, had a standard that leaks of secret information will go unpunished if the leak serves a substantial social benefit. Example: the Pentagon Papers, unpunished, because it gave the public important information about the duplicitousness of the executive branch in prosecuting the Vietnam War, telling us it was going swell, when in fact all was chaos, and getting worse -- result: no prosecution. Counter-example: the Plame leak, where a CIA agent was outed for political punishment -- result: prosecution.

Here, I think, the courts will find against Bush, because in performing his activity, he has ignored the legal authority of Congress in setting the law in the first place, and in the reviewing role of the FISA court to make sure the administration does not abuse the ability to spy on Americans.