Dear Gov. Dean -- Just dial 1-800-CALL-SPY …

15 December 2005 (# 10)

If only it were a joke. But, it’s not.

For starters, the number does not connect you to the Department of Justice or the FBI. Instead, you’re dialing the United States Army "CALL SPY Hotline" to report "incidents" within the Republic.

A part of aging should not include being forced to revisit really stupid, un-Constitutional endeavors of one’s government that one had hoped were vanquished, forever.

From Hoover’s "black bag" and "Cointelpro" operations, including spying on John Lennon and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., we all got an ample dose of the type of government that we then firmly rejected as un-American and immoral.

Through the 60’s, many of us had direct experiences with the un-Constitutional intrusion of various governmental operatives into our efforts to inform our government that it was performing recklessly and brutally and we wanted that behavior to stop.

One almost had the feeling by the mid-1970’s we might be restoring, and even advancing, a progressive agenda within America - an agenda resonant with the ideals of the Founders; with those of Lincoln, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy.

The systematic dismantling of anything remotely progressive and "American" began in earnest with Reagan’s crew, and thanks to the enormous financial and fanatical influence of Bruce Kovner and his American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the dismantling of “America” has accelerated.

The AEI crew Cheney infused into numerous Executive Branch positions, and the concomitant contamination of a substantial number of members of the US Congress are direct consequences of realizing the AEI militaristic imperial agenda for America. That agenda is orthogonal to what most Americans think their country is and now, tragically, establishes the legal basis for prosecuting America for the supreme crime of waging war of aggression.

More on Kovner in future letter about what must be done to stop Bolton.

For now, I request that you focus on the need to call upon every American citizen to demand that their Senators not only block the current version of the "Patriot Act" (history will record it as the "Tyranny Act", I assure you), but that they severely restructure that legislation as to have it robustly focused on actual threats.

The United States of America defeated Hitler and Hirohito in less time that it has now been chasing a gang of thugs being led by a fellow who ostensibly has kidney failure.

We must not allow the United States Army to spend one dime or one moment scouting Quaker anti-war gatherings like the one in Lake Worth, FL -- a "threat" requiring the attention of the US Army 902nd Military Intelligence Group!!



William Arkin summarizes it as well as anyone, today:



Gov. Dean, we need a legislative halt on the "Patriot Act."

We need a major judicial foray into the vast illegal activities of Bush, Cheney, their neoconster fellow imperialists, and those who are financing the destruction of America as law-abiding member of the community of Nations.

Thank you for your continued leadership,

Bush Said to Let U.S. Tap Calls Without Courts

By JAMES RISEN
and ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 - Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.

Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.

The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval was a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches.

"This is really a sea change," said a former senior official who specializes in national security law. "It's almost a mainstay of this country that the N.S.A. only does foreign searches."

More at the link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics/16program.html?ei=5094&en=22cb502ee0dee292&hp=&ex=1134709200&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print

On the second page of a report which reveals the White House engaged in warantless domestic spying, the New York Times reveals that it held the story for a full year at the request of the Bush Administration, RAW STORY can reveal.

The Times also reveals that senior members of Congress from both parties knew about Bush's decision to spy on Americans who were making international calls or emails, without warrants.

Further, the Times notes that they have omitted information in the article they did write, agreeing with the Bush Administration that the information could be useful for terrorists. Excerpts from the Times' article follow.

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/New_York_Times_admits_it_held_1215.html

17 December 2005 (# 12)

Beyond the shock of learning that the President of the United States of America violated the 4th Amendment to the Constitution, at a minimum, in authorizing the National Security Agency to spy on citizens, we are informed that:



So, we have:



The New York Times needs to be investigated.



As to Bush, well he just added another set of offenses to his already extensive rap sheet – it is obvious what legal actions should be taken to prevent the Nation and humanity of suffering another moment of his megalomaniacal sociopathy.

Thank you for your continued leadership,