CNN 2/5/06
THIS DOG WON'T HUNT... BUSH HAS COMMITTED A FEDERAL CRIME!
Jonathan Turley
AUDIO:
http://www.apfn.net/audio/M60205144451-CNN-SPY-FED-CRIME.MP3
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Lawyer's Claim Of Bush's "Crime"
NewsBusters - Jan 23, 2006
... to cite a convicted terrorist's lawyer's claim of Bush's
"crime." In the ... to quote from George Washington
University law professor Jonathan Turley that Bush's ...
Jonathan Turley Profile
Professor Jonathan Turley is a nationally recognized legal
scholar who has written extensively in areas ranging from
constitutional law to legal theory to ...
http://www.jonathanturley.com/JonathanTurley.htm
Gonzales to testify on domestic spying
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says the White House has
the authority for the eavesdropping program. WASHINGTON
(CNN) -- US Attorney ...
Bush approved multi-agency program to spy on Americans
DOUG THOMPSON, Capitol Hill Blue
Feb 3, 2006, 09:05
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m20290&l=i&size=1&hd=0
Although President Bush publicly claims he has limited
spying on Americans by the National Security Agency to
overseas phone calls involving members of al-Qaeda,
privately he has authorized a massive multi-agency domestic
surveillance operation that routinely pries into the lives
of millions of Americans who have no involvement in
terrorism or represent no threat to the security of the
United States.
Through executive orders or – more often – clandestine
powers that he believes he possesses as a "wartime
President," Bush has ordered the Pentagon, FBI, NSA and CIA
to expand domestic spying operations to levels never before
seen by professional operations.
"It is unbelievable," says a former CIA operative who
resigned in disgust rather than spy on his own country. "We
spend more time gathering intel on Americans than we do on
real enemies of our country."
Under orders from Bush, the military has sent agents out to
infiltrate anti-war groups, liberal organizations and even
workforces of municipal governments considered to be
opponents of the administration. In Vermont, a group of
Quakers discovered a Pentagon spy in their midst.
On Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union in
Philadelphia filed a Freedom of Information Act request
seeking files on Pentagon monitoring of peace activists and
other groups in that city. The move is part of a nationwide
effort by the ACLU to learn just how much domestic spying is
carried out by American military agents.
"Pentagon spies do not belong in Pittsburgh, in Philadelphia
or in State College," says Mary Catherine Roper, staff
attorney for the ACLU of Pennsylvania. "We don’t need the
military to protect us from lawful protests by concerned
citizens."
The national ACLU filed a similar FOIA request on behalf of
the American Friends Service Committee, Veterans for Peace,
United for Peace and Justice and Greenpeace. Other ACLU
affiliates are seeking Pentagon files on local groups in
Georgia, Rhode Island, Maine, and California.
But getting details will be difficult. The Bush
administration routinely fights FOIA requests, seeking
protection under the controversial USA Patriot Act and
citing "executive privilege" to keep White House involvement
a secret.
"The Pentagon’s monitoring of anti-war protesters is yet
another example of a government agency using its powers to
spy on law-abiding Americans who criticize U.S. policies,"
said Ben Wizner, a staff attorney with the national ACLU.
"How can we believe that the National Security Agency is
intercepting only al Qaeda phone calls when we have evidence
that the Pentagon is keeping tabs on student activists in
Pittsburgh?"
According to my contacts within the American intelligence
community, the NSA is not intercepting "only al Qaeda phone
calls" because the agency cannot limit its monitoring to
just such calls. NSA must "cast a wide net," monitoring
thousands upon thousands of phone calls and emails of
ordinary Americans in the hope of capturing just one phone
call from an an-Qaeda member.
"In reality, we’re monitoring all phone calls, all emails,
all forms of electronic communications," admits a longtime
NSA operative. "We listen to everyone in hopes of picking up
a certain word or phrase."
The FBI weekly issues thousands of "National Security
Letters" which orders banks, employers and other entities to
turn over information about Americans and forbids those same
agencies from revealing they released the information. Bush
wants to expand use of the national security letters but
that provision in the revised USA Patriot Act has stalled
permanent reauthorization as Congress granted a five-week
extension Thursday while lawmakers try to work out a
compromise.
In Vermont, more than half that state’s legislators have
signed a letter requesting that Gov. James Douglas' Homeland
Security Advisory Council denounce President Bush's domestic
spying program.
"Vermont has always had a tradition of vigilance in matters
of security and vigilance in matters of protecting
individual rights from an overreaching government," said the
letter, which was drafted in mid-January and delivered to
the governor's desk late Tuesday. "Vermonters have managed
in the most trying of times to balance the needs of both,
when demands of one were not sacrificed for the needs of
another."
Federal law is supposed to prohibit using the NSA to spy on
Americans and many legal scholars say Bush violated that law
by signing executive orders authorizing the domestic spying
program.
"This is one of the most serious constitutional crises that
we've ever faced in the country," said Jonathan Turley, a
George Washington University law professor. Turley added the
president's claim of executive authority based on Article II
"would put our system on a slippery slope."
"The president's use of the war resolution borders on
absurdity," Turley continues. "To have the attorney general
putting forward an interpretation that he cannot possibly
believe is true -- because he's not a moron -- is deeply
disturbing."
Legal scholars have joined with former government officials
in an open letter to Congress to question the President’s
actions.
We are scholars of constitutional law and former government
officials. We write in our individual capacities as citizens
concerned by the Bush administration's National Security
Agency domestic spying program, as reported in The New York
Times, and in particular to respond to the Justice
Department's December 22, 2005, letter to the majority and
minority leaders of the House and Senate Intelligence
Committees setting forth the administration's defense of the
program. Although the program's secrecy prevents us from
being privy to all of its details, the Justice Department's
defense of what it concedes was secret and warrantless
electronic surveillance of persons within the United States
fails to identify any plausible legal authority for such
surveillance. Accordingly the program appears on its face to
violate existing law," he letter says.
William and Mary Law Professor William W. Van Alstyne is
among the 14 scholars and former officials who signed the
letter.
"At an earlier time, kings of England could ignore acts of
Parliament and were, indeed, above the law. It was part of
the very design of our Constitution that no one elected
president would fancy himself to possess any similar
prerogative," Van Alstyne says. "So, now, the proposition is
once again being tested. It is no small matter, and I would
have felt professionally derelict not to join in a public
statement that simply straightforwardly articulates why all
who care about the integrity of our constitutional system
and of the rule of law itself should do all they can to
preserve it rather than have it subverted by instruments of
executive stealth."
Among those who signed the letter is former FBI director
William Sessions who calls the entire concept of domestic
spying "a gross violation of basic American rights and a
colossal abuse of Presidential power."
© Copyright 2006 by Capitol Hill Blue
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Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts
Jonathan Turley
Professor Jonathan Turley is a nationally recognized legal
scholar who has written extensively in areas ranging from
constitutional law to legal theory to tort law. He has
written over three dozen academic articles that have
appeared in a variety of leading law journals at Cornell,
Duke, Harvard, Northwestern, and other schools. Professor
Turley most recently completed a three-part study of the
historical and constitutional evolution of military system.
This study, entitled “The Military Pocket Republic,” will be
published in three parts by Northwestern University Law
Review and George Washington University Law Review.
http://www.jonathanturley.com/JonathanTurley.htm
WE ARE THE CHILDREN...
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