The End of the Wiretapping Scandal

Just where is this all leading? one might ask. Prima facie, the President violated an important law, the 1978 FISA act, which says he can't spy on Americans on American soil. The act was passed to counter Nixon's abuses, to keep the President from using easily assumed powers as a tool of political oppression.

Bush has indeed re-assumed the "spying on Americans" power. But that power itself is not an evil, though it is onerous. The evil of it comes when that power is abused to be a tool for political oppression -- such as sending off-bankroll folks to break into the psychiatrist's office of one of your chief critics, in an attempt to get some career-ending dirt on them.

So did Bush use his capriciously assumed wiretapping power as a tool for political oppression -- for example, spying on journalists, politicians, innocent Americans in an attempt to collect information which is irrelevant to Bush's War on Terror, but might prove useful in other contexts?

Nobody knows. He certainly had the capability to do this, which, actually, he's not supposed to; it's the role of the FISA court, had he bothered to make his requests properly, to ensure that Bush's spying ability is not used as a tool of oppression, but Bush did not keep them informed of when and how he was using this power.

Neither did Bush inform congress -- unless they're not telling us something -- of the specific instances (we're told, over 500 such wiretaps, ordered by NSA shift supervisors and unreviewed by their superiors, running at any given time for the past 3 years).

To bring Bush back in compliance, Congress should pass a law requiring that each and every single FISA violation now be brought for the court's review; and every instance which is not approved retroactively, the corresponding transcripts should be given to the affected party.

The most important part of this process is to make the other two branches of government fully aware of Bush's spying activities, so that it can be determined if he did abuse his power. And he might have abused it. This is the administration that the Vice President's office used secret information leaked to the press to silence a critic, taking that information from CIA insiders, to the Vice President's office, and then to their political arm in the person of Karl Rove, who then coordinated that leaking with the Vice President's office (Scooter Libby) and the NSA (Stephen Hadley). So, it's kind of far from given that abuses have not taken place.

If abuses did take place, we then have an oppressive KGB-insider for a President. I should think that would be sufficient to bother Republican lawmakers to remove him from office.

But, on the other hand, if all Bush did with this power is listen to direct phone calls between Osama Bin Laden and his his totally hot niece who was born in California , then it is our unfortunate situation that Democrats are intellectually consistent enough and Republicans self-interested enough to not see this as a threat to the Republic, and to simply to let the matter drop. Sure, it would be nice that law and order rule the day.