For the past week, as part of the administration’s defense of its warrantless-spying program, the Bush gang has insisted that Congress empowered the president to do, well, pretty much anything he wanted when lawmakers passed a post-9/11 measure on the war on terrorism. Members of Congress from both parties who voted for the law have already said that they had no idea the administration would interpret it to cover such a step
Today, however, former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), who was Senate Majority Leader in 2001, moves the ball forward in a big way with an inside look at how the White House approached post-9/11 authority.
On the evening of Sept. 12, 2001, the White House proposed that Congress authorize the use of military force to “deter and pre-empt any future acts of terrorism or aggression against the United States.” Believing the scope of this language was too broad and ill defined, Congress chose instead, on Sept. 14, to authorize “all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons [the president] determines planned, authorized, committed or aided” the attacks of Sept. 11. With this language, Congress denied the president the more expansive authority he sought and insisted that his authority be used specifically against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.
Just before the Senate acted on this compromise resolution, the White House sought one last change. Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words “in the United States and” after “appropriate force” in the agreed-upon text. This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas — where we all understood he wanted authority to act — but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens. I could see no justification for Congress to accede to this extraordinary request for additional authority. I refused.
The White House had identified exactly what power it wanted. The administration asked for the authority and Congress said no. The president did it anyway, all the while circumventing FISA and the need for judicial oversight.
Coincidentally, just last night, Bush’s Justice Department issued its most detailed defense to date of the president’s warrantless-surveillance program in a letter to Congress, citing, in part, the measure Daschle described.
The Bush gang, in other words, is quickly running out of excuses.