{"id":11662,"date":"2007-08-01T11:18:40","date_gmt":"2007-08-01T15:18:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/11662.html"},"modified":"2007-08-01T11:18:40","modified_gmt":"2007-08-01T15:18:40","slug":"a-whole-lot-of-surveillance-going-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/a-whole-lot-of-surveillance-going-on\/","title":{"rendered":"A whole lot of surveillance going on"},"content":{"rendered":"

After a while, between the lies, dissembling, and stone-walling, the details can get a little confusing. Asked initially about warrantless domestic spying, Alberto Gonzales said there wasn’t any disagreement about the legality of Bush’s so-called “Terrorist Surveillance Program” at the Justice Department. We later learned there was all kinds of disagreement and Gonzales was lying.<\/p>\n

As part of the ongoing administration effort to clear the Attorney General of apparent perjury, the Bush gang disclosed yesterday that Gonzales was technically telling the truth because there was actually a whole lot of surveillance going on<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Bush administration’s chief intelligence official said yesterday that President Bush authorized a series of secret surveillance activities under a single executive order in late 2001. The disclosure makes clear that a controversial National Security Agency program was part of a much broader operation than the president previously described.<\/p>\n

The disclosure by Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, appears to be the first time that the administration has publicly acknowledged that Bush’s order included undisclosed activities beyond the warrantless surveillance of e-mails and phone calls that Bush confirmed in December 2005.<\/p>\n

In a letter to Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), McConnell wrote that the executive order following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks included “a number of . . . intelligence activities” and that a name routinely used by the administration — the Terrorist Surveillance Program — applied only to “one particular aspect of these activities, and nothing more.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So, is McConnell talking about eavesdropping on Americans’ phone calls without a warrant? No, that’s been disclosed. Data-mining? No, that’s been disclosed, too. The new McConnell letter is describing a broader surveillance program that includes even more<\/i> spying. Like what? No one outside the administration knows. (Indeed, to hear McConnell tell it, the Terrorist Surveillance Program isn’t even a program; it’s an activity within a bigger program that he can’t talk about.)<\/p>\n

The point may be to offer an elaborate (and cryptic) defense for an Attorney General who’s been playing fast and loose for far too long, but it’s also a sweeping admission of broader surveillance than the administration has ever been willing to acknowledge.
\n<\/p>\n

Kate Martin, executive director of the Center for National Security Studies, said the new disclosures show that Gonzales and other administration officials have “repeatedly misled the Congress and the American public” about the extent of NSA surveillance efforts.<\/p>\n

“They have repeatedly tried to give the false impression that the surveillance was narrow and justified,” Martin said. “Why did it take accusations of perjury before the DNI disclosed that there is indeed other, presumably broader and more questionable, surveillance?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Good question.<\/p>\n

And as for Mr. Gonzales, do these new, vague revelations about broader secret surveillance exonerate our embattled Attorney General? Not so much.<\/p>\n

Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), who was among a group of four Democratic senators who called last week for a perjury investigation of Gonzales, said: “The question of whether Attorney General Gonzales perjured himself looms as large now as it did before this letter.<\/p>\n

“This letter is no vindication of the attorney general,” he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For what it’s worth, Arlen Specter doesn’t appear to be convinced<\/a>, either.<\/p>\n

So, what’s the bottom line? Gonzales’ veracity remains very much in doubt, the administration’s cryptic defense is unpersuasive, and the Bush gang’s unprecedented efforts to spy on untold numbers of Americans are broader than anyone has been willing to acknowledge, but are still classified.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After a while, between the lies, dissembling, and stone-walling, the details can get a little confusing. Asked initially about warrantless domestic spying, Alberto Gonzales said there wasn’t any disagreement about the legality of Bush’s so-called “Terrorist Surveillance Program” at the Justice Department. We later learned there was all kinds of disagreement and Gonzales was lying. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11662","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11662","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11662"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11662\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11662"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11662"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11662"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}