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FBI, DoD, NSA: All Spying on You
(Joel Bleifuss, In These Times, January 26, 2006)
Quietly, the war on terror, in which everything is permitted, has laid the ground work for the Bush administration to intrude into the political life of citizens. . . . Over the last several months, it has been revealed that the FBI, the Pentagon and the National Security Agency have each set up apparently independent covert operations to monitor the constitutionally protected political activities of citizens opposed to the Bush administration's war in Iraq. . . . The Washington Post discovered that under authority granted by the U.S. Patriot Act, the FBI has been issuing what are known as "national Security letters" that allow the bureau to spy on U.S. residents. The November 6 Post reported, "The FBI has issued tens of thousands of national security letters, extending the bureau's reach as never before into the telephone calls, correspondence and financial lives of ordinary Americans. Most of the U.S. residents and citizens whose records were screened, the FBI acknowledged, were not suspected of wrongdoing." . . . Christopher Plye, a former Army intelligence officer who exposed Pentagon infiltration of the anti-war and civil rights movements during the Vietnam War, told NBC, "This is the J. Edgar Hoover Memorial Vacuum Cleaner. They're collecting everything." . . . And we have been down that road before: The FBI's surveillance of Martin Luther King, infiltration of the anti-Vietnam war and civil rights movements by federal agent provocateurs, three incidents of NSA spying, and, in 1972, Watergate, a covert operation that involved agents of the Nixon administration breaking into Democratic Party headquarters. . . . These covert operations are a sign that the neoconservatives who set administration policy have adopted the policy of victory over all opponents by any means. . . . As a result, we now have a government that doesn't respect basic rules of constitutional government. Or, to put it another way, our government has redefined the Constitution in such a way as to justify its actions--and to provide legal protection for those who violate what used to be constitutional rights. . . . As with the war in Iraq, all of this has some people in the intelligence community worried. Hence, the leaks. . . . Eleanor Hill, a former Pentagon inspector general and the staff director of the joint congressional inquiry into 9/11, said that members of Congress had repeatedly asked the administration to recommend reforms of FISA. "The question was always asked of these witnesses: 'What do you need?' ... There was plenty of time to raise this issue. You don't just take it upon yourself to circumvent FISA. That attitude ignores the absolutely critical need for oversight." . . . Yet the trump administration's trump card remains: terrorism. "This authorization is a vital toll in our war against the terrorists," said Bush. . . . The very terrifying nature of terrorism turns those who question the Bush wars on into enemies of the state. . . . Simplistic political discourse a la Bush may not be so much a sign of the lack of presidential intelligence as it is a strategically important way to garner support for global war. What it does is disarm people. It belittles our critical capacities. It invites us to forget about criticism. I think this is one of the reasons why so many people, including progressive and radical people, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, could not mobilize the moral resources to speak out against Bush. . . . A similar dynamic seems to be playing out with the domestic spying scandals. Surveillance of potential terrorists is necessary, therefore our rights take second place. . . . The administration makes no bones about this. Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, as head of NSA, testified to Congress in 2002 that he met with his staff after 9/11: "I told them that free people always had to decide where to draw the line between their liberty and their security." Today, Hayden is the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence.

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
-- Benjamin Franklin

posted by LoZo 10:04 AM