Political opposites aligned against Bush wiretaps
- James Sterngold, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Larry Diamond, a Democrat and a Hoover Institution senior
fellow, went to Baghdad in 2004 as a consultant for the
U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority, believing strongly
in the Bush administration's goal of building a democracy
there. While critical of many aspects of the Iraq war, he
has, he says, wholeheartedly supported President Bush's
aggressive approach to the war on terror.
Grover Norquist is one of the most influential conservative
Republicans in Washington. His weekly "Wednesday Meeting" at
his L Street office is a must for conservative strategists,
and he has been called the "managing director of the
hard-core right" by the liberal Nation magazine. Perhaps the
country's leading anti-tax enthusiast, he is, like Diamond,
a hawk in the war on terror.
Despite coming from opposite ends of the political spectrum,
they agree on one other major issue: that the Bush
administration's program of domestic eavesdropping by the
National Security Agency without obtaining court warrants
has less to do with the war on terror than with threats to
the nation's civil liberties.
"My view on the terrorists is that we should find all of
them and kill them," said Norquist. "But we should also
protect our civil liberties, which the terrorists are trying
to destroy."
Diamond, whose academic specialty is the building of
democracies, has taken his opposition one step further,
joining a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties
Union last week to halt the president's program.
"I teach about democracy and the rule of law, the quality of
a democracy," he said. "I meet so many people around the
world who want to look up to the American model, and a
spying program like this really harms us."
Bush and his senior officials have defended the wiretaps as
essential in a time of war, while many White House and GOP
officials have attempted to characterize opposition as
coming mostly from partisan Democrats critical of the war in
Iraq. In a speech to the Republican National Committee last
Friday, Karl Rove, the president's chief strategist, accused
Democrats of making "wild and reckless and false charges" on
the wiretap issue.
But, in fact, a number of prominent Republicans, including
Sen. John McCain of Arizona, have criticized Bush and the
wiretapping without court warrants as a violation of the law
and basic civil liberties. So have other well-known
conservatives, including former Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia.
Bruce Fein, a lawyer who worked in the Justice Department
under President Ronald Reagan, wrote in a commentary in the
Washington Times last week that Bush should face "possible
impeachment" if the practice is not stopped.
"There have been as many Republicans as Democrats who've
spoken out on the issue," Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said
Tuesday as he stated that the Senate Judiciary Committee,
which he heads, will begin hearings on the matter on Feb. 6.
Norquist and Diamond explained in interviews why this odd
alliance has come together in spite of the bitter divisions
between left and right on most other political issues.
Diamond, who also teaches at Stanford University, is an
expert on democratic development -- the reason he was hired
as a consultant for the Coalition Provisional Authority by
his old friend and former Stanford colleague Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice.
He says that, though he is a Democrat, his focus is civil
liberties, not the president.
"I give Bush credit for his vigilance since 9/11," said
Diamond. "I'm very much in sympathy with the need to monitor
al Qaeda and terrorists, to uproot them, interdict them,
catch them and when necessary to kill them. But we can't
roll over on something like this."
Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, says he
knows some fellow conservatives have labeled him a traitor
for condemning the same administration that instituted the
biggest tax cuts in recent American history -- cuts for
which Norquist vigorously lobbied. But an even greater
disloyalty, Norquist responds, would be to allow what he
regards as the trampling on civil liberties to go unimpeded.
"The president's friends are exactly who you want telling
him this," said Norquist. "No one else has the credibility.
We are being team players by telling him, not by keeping
quiet."
Norquist said one of his main concerns is that, once the
government becomes so intrusive, there is no way to prevent
continued erosion of individual rights.
"Even if you believed an angel was making these decisions,
and that's not what I'm saying, at some point the person in
the White House will change," he said. "Hillary Clinton
might be making these decisions."
The New York Times first disclosed last month that the
president had approved a program under which the NSA had
been intercepting an apparently large volume of
communications to and from the United States without first
obtaining special court approval, as required by the 1978
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
But the president and senior administration officials insist
that Congress gave the president the authority to bypass
that law. They also say that the extraordinary threat
presented by terrorist groups require such measures.
Initially, most national opinion polls narrowly favored the
administration's position, but polls released this week show
a majority in favor of obtaining a warrant before such
surveillance is permitted.
Last Tuesday, the ACLU and the New York-based Center for
Constitutional Rights filed separate lawsuits in federal
courts seeking to stop the administration from the
eavesdropping without obtaining warrants.
Joining the ACLU suit were a mix of supporters and opponents
of the Bush administration, including Diamond, James Bamford,
who has written several books on the NSA, and Christopher
Hitchens, a columnist who vocally supported the Bush
administration's invasion of Iraq and has written
extensively about the threat posed by "Islamo-fascism," the
term he uses to characterize the ideology of al Qaeda.
Diamond and the others who have signed on to the ACLU suit
say they suspect that some of their overseas communications
might have been intercepted.
Diamond also fears that some researchers, especially in the
Middle East, will stop communicating with him for fear they
might be caught in the NSA's electronic net, making it
harder for him to continue his own work on democratic
development in countries like Egypt and Iraq.
And, like Norquist, Diamond worries about how the Bush
administration or others might use the wiretap information.
"That information could be sitting in a database somewhere
for a long time," said Diamond. "It might be there not just
for this administration, but for anyone.
"That data could be mined for any reason," he added. "It's
frightening."
Norquist is not a party to either suit, but he has been
outspoken in criticizing his party's leader. He said that he
had brushed aside concerns that he was harming the president
or being disloyal at a critical time.
"You need someone who is a Republican to call the president
on this," he said.
Norquist said, ironically, he was particularly concerned
about the problem because the Democrats appeared to be so
weak.
"For 40 years we always assumed the left would take care of
our civil liberties," he said. "If there were problems, the
Democrats were the ones who would push back. But now with a
Republican Congress and a Republican in the White House, the
ACLU can't get their calls returned."
Referring to what some see as a conflict between fighting
vicious terrorists and upholding all civil liberties,
Norquist said: "It's not either/or. If the president thinks
he needs different tools, pass a law to get them. Don't
break the existing laws."
E-mail James Sterngold at jsterngold@sfchronicle.com.
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