Proof that Kerry is a huge threat to the Bush/wingnut agenda

Published Friday, December 16, 2005

Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts

By JAMES RISEN and ERIC LICHTBLAU
New York Times

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."


snip....

Concerns and Revisions

Several senior government officials say that when the special operation began, there were few controls on it and little formal oversight outside the N.S.A. The agency can choose its eavesdropping targets and does not have to seek approval from Justice Department or other Bush administration officials. Some agency officials wanted nothing to do with the program, apparently fearful of participating in an illegal operation, a former senior Bush administration official said. Before the 2004 election, the official said, some N.S.A. personnel worried that the program might come under scrutiny by Congressional or criminal investigators if Senator John Kerry, the Democratic nominee, was elected president.

In mid-2004, concerns about the program expressed by national security officials, government lawyers and a judge prompted the Bush administration to suspend elements of the program and revamp it.


more...
http://www.theledger.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051216/ZNYT03/512160440

Because they'll break up media consolidation, they'll take away corporate benefits, take away the gift to the wealthy, and they'll open all these disgusting things this administration has done.

I'm so SICKENED!

We MUST FIGHT!

We MUST get RESPONSIBLE AND ACCOUNTABLE people into office.

We MUST take back the MEDIA.

And We MUST TAKE BACK OUR voting systems.

WE DON'T HAVE A DEMOCRACY anymore!!!

filibuster the Patriot Act, hold Bush accountable. Where are the Republicans in all of this?

Kerry had a positive effect on the country. The Iraq policy started to change because Kerry ran for president. True, the country is still headed in the wrong direction, but without Kerry speaking out last year and being a viable threat to the president, things would have been much worse.

They didn't tell people about the U.S. election fraud and they still don't.

They didn't tell people that Rove and Cheney were probably involved in the Plame treason because they WANTED GWB to win! They INTENTIONALLY WITHHELD INFORMATION.

NOW, we discover that they intentionally withheld information that BUSH ordered WIRE TAPS WITHOUT A COURT ORDER! THEY withheld all of this because they DID NOT WANT A DEMOCRATIC PERSON ELECTED!

I was listening to NPR, and they said that the * administration told the NY Times to not print the article, so they waited A YEAR (I'm curious exactly when they wanted to print it -- before or after the election). Of course, the inside the beltway reporter on NPR made it seem like the NYT was defiant because they printed it at all. Excuse me, but this would have been highly relevant to the 2004 election with a lot of Libertarians extremely turned off by Big Brother reading their e-mails without even a warrant. Liberal media, my ass.

That really really steams me that they withheld this article for one year.
This is the NYT for chrissakes!

Now we need an investigation as to why the NYT would not print this.

Nothing seems to go right anymore.

It's reputation as liberal, gave it's reporting on Bush credibility. From the big things, like Judith Miller to the lesser things, like having Nagourney and Jorie (forgot last name) cover Kerry (pretty harshly) while Bush groupie Brumiller cvered Bush. The Jorie person actually described Kerry as a social loner. When this was complained about, their ombushman wrote that she wrote this because many Kerry friends agreed. (This is why he had very very committed friends from every step of his life I guess.)

Why is the media suddenly less protective - Bush's drop in the polls? That the election, unfortunately is in the past.

Another question is - is the problem a Democrat or because it was John Kerry - who would fight for the America we believe in. (Would they have been ok with a Bill Clinton?)

because of the renewal of the Patriot Act.

I would think that given JK's past investigations, they would have been particulary worried about a Kerry administration! He doesn't "play along", and they knew it.

Yes, it's good it came out today and it was mentioned by Feingold and Leahy and maybe others before the cloture vote. But on the other hand, it was known by the NYT since LAST YEAR and they held the story at the request of the administration.

And I think the Dems are just getting warmed up on this one--those who made statements on the Hill just had a bit of advanced notice today. I can see this growing into something substantial.

All I can say about the NYT is that they were intimidated and pressured, possibly threatened up until now. I'm glad the cloture vote went our way.

I have NPR's All Things Considered on the radio--and a little while ago they said that * was planning to use this news cycle to cloat about the Iraqi election--LOL. But it's all Patriot Act and this new disclosure.

An ever growing list of facts, illegalities... disgusting, scary and demoralizing to no end. I try to take news like this as fuel for action and righteous indignation but alas all to often it's just a sense of hopelessness & powerlessness.

John Kerry knows where a lot of bodies are buried from the last 25 years of Rethug abuse. (And Bill Clinton had a very hard time bringing some of this part of the national government to heel. There were a lot of people in various agencies with access to all that nice defense money that resisted Clinton's oversight and tried to destroy him as well.)

I often wondered, just for shits and giggles, during the campaign what would happen when a Pres. Kerry took office and had the right to pick up the phone and order some 'secret' papers delivered to the WH for some late night reading. After Iran-Contra and BCCI and after 10 years more or less of Rethug rule in Congress and all the give-aways to the well-connected, I wonder what the first paper he asks for from the archives would be. Cuz he knows or can make damn good guesses as to where 'the bodies' of the last 25 years of Rethuggery are buried, he knows.

possibly any files they had on him - they obviously found nothing bad or they would have thrown it at him - but he had commented that he never knew how much he was tracked in the 70s. I wonder how much they followed him in the 70s and 80s.

Just like most of us antiwar people in the 70s wanted Nixon gone, it wasn't Vietnam but the coverup of Watergate that brought him down.

With Bush, if (as the other thread talks of) there is a case that is made to impeach Bush, it may be for things like this or for the Plame cover-up or outing.

Some agency officials wanted nothing to do with the program, apparently fearful of participating in an illegal operation, a former senior Bush administration official said.

Bush authorized this action with full knowledge that a number of officials viewed it as an illegal operation.

Both as SoS and Homeland security would have some need to know and neither are wingnuts.

who rode into town with Bush in 2000 for THE trial. They've all got some explaning to do.

Report of NSA Spying Prompts Call for Probe
Report That Bush Authorized NSA to Spy in U.S. Concerns Senators, Prompts Call for Investigation
By JENNIFER LOVEN
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter put the Bush administration on notice Friday that his panel would hold hearings into a report that the National Security Agency eavesdropped without warrants on people inside the United States.

"There is no doubt that this is inappropriate," said Specter, R-Pa., calling hearings early next year "a very, very high priority." He wasn't alone in reacting harshly to the report. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said the story, first reported in Friday's New York Times, was troubling.

Neither Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice nor White House press secretary Scott McClellan would confirm or deny the report which said the super-secret NSA had spied on as many as 500 people at any given time since 2002 in this country.

That year, following the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush authorized the NSA to monitor the international phone calls and international e-mails of hundreds perhaps thousands of people inside the United States, the Times reported.


more...

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=1413531&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312

I never voted for Specter, but there are moments I'm really proud of him. He was a Democrat who became a Republican to work against corruption in the Democratic party, and now that the tables have turned, it's nice to see him being equal opportunity about this.

Chit.

Bush said in an interview that "we do not discuss ongoing intelligence operations to protect the country. And the reason why is that there's an enemy that lurks, that would like to know exactly what we're trying to do to stop them.

"I will make this point," Bush said. "That whatever I do to protect the American people — and I have an obligation to do so — that we will uphold the law, and decisions made are made understanding we have an obligation to protect the civil liberties of the American people."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051216/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_nsa_16


:wtf:


Where do I start?

I just may watch to watch him make an arse out of himself.