House to Hold Inquiry on NSA Surveillance

Posted on February 17, 2006

Leaders of the House Intelligence Committee said Thursday that they had agreed to open a Congressional inquiry prompted by the Bush administration’s domestic surveillance program. But a dispute immediately broke out among committee Republicans over the scope of the inquiry.

Representative Heather A. Wilson, the New Mexico Republican and committee member who called last week for the investigation, said the review “will have multiple avenues, because we want to completely understand the program and move forward.”

But an aide to Representative Peter Hoekstra, the Michigan Republican who leads the committee, said the inquiry would be much more limited in scope, focusing on whether federal surveillance laws needed to be changed and not on the eavesdropping program itself.

The ACLU are rebuking this calling it a backdoor plan to legalize warrantless spying.

The American Civil Liberties Union today strongly condemned an apparent backroom deal between Senate Intelligence Chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS) and the White House to try to change domestic surveillance laws to permit the warrantless surveillance of Americans conducted by the National Security Agency.

The following can be attributed to Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office:

“This deal is a clear indication that the White House knows it broke the law. Congress must focus on the laws that have already been broken instead of taking steps to reward the White House. This whitewash will not stand. No congressional leader should stoop to help the administration duck responsibility for its already illegal actions. This backdoor plan to cover up the warrantless wiretapping only reinforces the urgent need for a full, open and independent investigation. The rule of law has been broken, and the American people deserve to know the truth.”

This is pure propaganda from the ACLU. Congress has realized the absolute necessity of the program designed to listen in on conversations where one end is a suspected Al Qaeda operative. The ACLU rebuking the program is a clear admission that they have no regard for the safety of America, and want to completely eliminate the program. As I pointed out earlier this week, this is the goal of the ACLU as stated in their policy #117.

Limit the CIA, under the new name of the Foreign Intelligence Agency, to collecting and evaluatiing foreign intelligence information. Abolish all covert operations.

Limit the FBI to criminal investigations by elimimnating all COINTEL-PRO-type activity and all foreign and domestic intelligence investigations of groups or individuals unrelated to a specific criminal offense.

Prohibit entirely wiretaps, tapping of telecommunications and burglaries.

Restrict mail openings, mail covers, inspection of bank records, and inspection of telephone records by requiring a warrant issued on probable cause to believe a crime has been committed.

Prohibit all domestic intelligence and political information-gathering. Only investigations of crimes which have been, are being, or are about to be committed may be conducted.

The agreement to conduct an inquiry came as the Senate Intelligence Committee put off a vote on conducting its own investigation after the White House, reversing course, agreed to open discussions about changing federal surveillance law. Senate Democrats accused Republicans of bowing to White House pressure.

For weeks, the Bush administration has been strongly resisting calls from Democrats and some Republicans for a full review into the National Security Agency’s surveillance program, saying such inquiries are unnecessary and risked disclosing national security information that could help Al Qaeda.

Elsewhere on Thursday, a federal judge ordered the administration to begin turning over internal documents on the surveillance program, the Justice Department balked at having John Ashcroft, the former attorney general, and other former department officials testify about it before Congress, and lawyers for a Kentucky man prepared to bring a federal civil rights lawsuit on Friday against President Bush to have the surveillance declared illegal and unconstitutional.

The surveillance, authorized in secret by President Bush soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, has allowed the N.S.A. to eavesdrop on the international phone and e-mail communications of hundreds and perhaps thousands of people within the United States without warrants when the authorities suspect that they might have links to terrorists.

So the Democrats are definitely in retreat on this issue. They are seeing how much the program is necessary to protect America, and now the focus will be on changing laws in order to satisfy their doubts on its legality. This isn’t the end of the controversy however, it will be taken up in the judicial branch of the government, with the ACLU leading the way with their huge lawsuit. A Federal judge just ordered Top Secret NSA files to be released to civil liberties groups.

The ACLU are cheering!

The ACLU today also welcomed a federal court order directing the Justice Department to turn over documents on the NSA’s warrantless surveillance program within 20 days, or to provide a list of specific documents it is withholding. U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy’s order comes in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, which the ACLU joined earlier this month

The president and the attorney general have time and again insisted that the warrantless NSA domestic spying program operated within the bounds of the law. However, many members of Congress, numerous legal experts and civil liberties organizations, and even the non-partisan Congressional Research Service have rejected that claim. For the sake of core democratic principles, the ACLU said, no president can be given a blank check when it comes to Americans’ rights.

The ACLU expressed its disappointment with the failure of the two similar House resolutions on Wednesday and encouraged the Senate to exercise more leadership and independence from political pressures for sake of the rule of law. Both resolutions failed in the House Judiciary Committee yesterday on a 21 – 16 vote, with one Republican Congressman, John Hostettler (R-IN), willing to stand up for the principle of checks and balances over party pressure. In recent weeks, the White House has applied increasing pressure on Republicans – in both chambers -not to question the warrantless domestic eavesdropping program in this mid-term election year.

“Our founders insisted on checks on presidential power to protect our nation’s legacy of liberty,” said Lisa Graves, ACLU Senior Counsel for Legislative Strategy. “The Senate Intelligence Committee must transcend party politics and insist on facts, not rhetoric. The American people deserve the truth, not a whitewash by their elected representatives. Our security and liberty are far too important to be sacrificed in order to protect a president that has hidden from Congress and the public his decision that he need not follow the laws that protect the rights of ordinary Americans.”

The ACLU will fight this tooth and nail to the end. It seems they are dead set on destroying America, and any program designed to protect it. The real investigation that needs to take place is an inquiry into the ACLU, and whether or not they are sleeping with the enemy. America deserves to know.

Other:Decision 08

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One Response to “House to Hold Inquiry on NSA Surveillance”

RedSonja2000 on February 17th, 2006 3:21 pm

“This is pure propaganda from the ACLU. Congress has realized the absolute necessity of the program designed to listen in on conversations where one end is a suspected Al Qaeda operative. The ACLU rebuking the program is a clear admission that they have no regard for the safety of America, and want to completely eliminate the program”

I’m still trying to figure out how we are unsafe if they get the warrrent retroactively. Nobody has ever bothered to address that.