The Ashford Zone Blog

Glenn Greenwald is liveblogging the Senate Hearings on the NSA wiretapping.  Gonzales is the witness du jour.

UPDATE:  Getting off to a bad start.  Gonzales isn’t being sworn in this time.  Video here.

UPDATE 2:  John Podhoretz at NRO’s "The Corner" writes this:

Kennedy wants to know what’s different between today and the earliest debates on this matter during the Ford administration — then suggests that the Cold War presented at least as great a threat as the current war on terror because we had nuclear weapons pointed at us from the Soviet Union. The sound you just heard was me falling on the floor in a dead faint upon hearing Teddy Kennedy acknowledge that the United States was actually in jeopardy during the Cold War.

Yeah, jackass.  His brother was only the President during the Cuba Missile Crisis.

UPDATE 3:  Boy, Podhoretz is really flippin’ today:

SEN. DAILYKOS FEINSTEIN ASKS A BUNCH OF QUESTIONS OFF A SHEET… including one about whether the president can, on his own initiative, engage in illegal propaganda activities inside the United States. She cites statute 502K-12 subsection ABCD (well, not actually, but that’s what it sounded like). When Attorney General Gonzales, properly considering himself sandbagged by an issue involving a statute in the U.S. code having nothing whatsoever to do with the case at hand, protests that he does not want to give an uninformed answer to a complex question, Sen. Feinstein announces, "I don’t want to argue with you," and then goes right on to insist that of course the president would be tempted to suspend many civil liberties. Bad form, Senator. Rude and unjust. God forbid you should actually listen when Gonzales attempts to offer a reasoned answer to your outrageous, DailyKos-level question.

It isn’t an outrageous question, not terribly complex.  The Administration’s legal position is that under the AUMF and the Constitution, the President can do whatever is necessary to conduct the war on terrorism.  The question, quite simply, is: does this include illegal propaganda activities?  Sure, Feinstein’s recitiation of a legal statute may be "complex" to "lawyers" like Podhoretz and the Attorney General, and it may further confuse them because it is hypothetical.  But it is perfectly reasonable to test the outer limits, if any, to the Administration position on presidential powers.

I think Podhoretz is upset because Gonzales isn’t being pitched a bunch of lazy softballs.

UPDATE 4:  It’s probably useful to note that that the Washington Post reported on 2/5 that the NSA wiretap program has surveilled thousands, but only a handful "aroused enough suspicion during warrantless eavesdropping to justify interception of their domestic calls."

The Left Coaster says that this is further evidence that the Administration is misusing its authority:

Tell me again cultists why it is too cumbersome for Bush to follow the FISA law to obtain warrants to spy on Americans, when out of the 5,000 people he has spied upon only ten or so a year trigger the full range of monitoring?

TalkLeft summarizes:

Bush claims he doesn’t spy on Americans. Cheney claims the program saved ‘thousands of lives. ‘The truth, as the Washington Post reports, is that the program has rarely uncovered information about terrorists or terrorists acts; the NSA has eavesdropped on many thousands of Americans without probable cause; and that probable cause or even reasonable suspicion will never exist because of the washout rate and number of false positives.

UPDATE 5:  Gonzales closed his opening statement with this:

I have highlighted the legal authority for the terrorist surveillance program. And I look forward to our discussion, and know that you appreciate there remain serious constraints of what I can say about operational details. Our enemy is listening. And I cannot help but wonder if they aren’t shaking their heads in amazement at the thought that anyone would imperil such a sensitive program by leaking its existence in the first place, and smiling at the prospect that we might now disclose even more or perhaps even unilaterally disarm ourselves of a key tool in the War on Terror.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I haven’t seen much commentary on this, so I’ll stick my head out.  Does anybody really believe this meme? 

I’m sure that someone in al Qaeda is paying attention to the hearings, but does anyone think they are altering their operations one iota based on the revelation of Bush’s "terrorist surveillance program"? 

We already KNOW that terrorists communicate in code.  We already KNOW that they work clandestinely.  We already KNOW that THEY KNOW that their operations are considered illegal, and THEY KNOW we have huge resources.   So clearly, they are being cautious, and communicating in ways to avoid detection.  It’s not like the read the United States Code, and toe right up to the line.  It’s not like they say, "Oh, the statutes forbid surveillance techniques X,Y, and Z, so we’ll communicate by X,Y, and Z."  Right?

The notion that we’re giving the enemy a blueprint of our intelligence techniques is ridiculous.  The reason they have succeeded is not because they are out-cunning us armed with knowledge of our capabilities; it’s because they are low tech.

MyDD gathers the evidence. 

Bush Administration uses U.S. Army to spy on war critics.  The Bush Administration used top-secret U.S. Army spying capabilities to spy on domestic war critics such as Quakers, Students Against the War, People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and Greenpeace. An internal review forced the Pentagon to admit it had "improperly stored" information on potentially thousands of people because there was no "reasonable belief" they had any link to terrorism. (Newsweek, 1/30/06)

Bush Administration uses FBI to spy on war critics.  The Bush administration is using the FBI to "collect extensive information on the tactics, training and organization of antiwar demonstrators," causing the California Attorney General to declare that Bush Administration policy violates the state constitution prohibition on spying on political and religious groups without evidence of criminal activity. (San Francisco Chronicle, 11/23/03)

Bush Administration forced to turn over records revealing FBI is spying on Bush critics.  A Freedom of Information Act request revealed the FBI "collected at least 3,500 pages of internal documents in the last several years on a handful of civil rights and antiwar protest groups" that are leading Bush critics "in what the groups charge is an attempt to stifle political opposition to the Bush administration." (New York Times, 7/18/05)

Bush Administration uses Pentagon to spy on Bush critics. NBC obtained a 400-page Pentagon document outlining the Bush administration’s surveillance of war critics.1,500 different events (aka. anti-war protests) in just a 10-month period.  "I think Americans should be concerned that the military, in fact, has reached too far," says NBC News military analyst Bill Arkin. "It means that they’re actually collecting information about who’s at those protests, the descriptions of vehicles at those protests.On the domestic level, this is unprecedented." (NBC News, 12/14/05)

The Bush Administration may have wiretapped a CNN reporter. In January, NBC published a transcript in which James Risen, the New York Times reporter who broke the NSA wiretap story, was asked if CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour’s phone was wiretapped.  After a surge of interest, NBC deleted that line – saying the transcript was "released prematurely." Amanpour is married to James Rubin, a top Clinton Administration foreign policy strategist and an advisor to John Kerry’s presidential campaign. (CNN, 1/6/06)

Gen. Michael Hayden refused to answer question about spying on political enemies at National Press Club.  At a public appearance, Bush’s pointman in the Office of National Intelligence was asked if the NSA was wiretapping Bush’s political enemies.  When Hayden dodged the question, the questioner repeated, "No, I asked, are you targeting us and people who politically oppose the Bush government, the Bush administration? Not a fishing net, but are you targeting specifically political opponents of the Bush administration?"  Hayden looked at the questioner, and after a silence called on a different questioner. (Hayden National Press Club remarks, 1/23/06) (video) (audio)

Although these are disturbing incidents, I think the cumulative evidence does not yet point to widespread surveillance of political opponents.  It does, however, raise many questions.

Since January, First Amendment lawyer Glenn Greenwald has been doing extraordinary research and original thinking/blogging on the NSA wiretapping issue (I, myself, have linked to him dozens of times in the past few weeks). 

I guess that’s why he’s been summoned to D.C. to provide assistance to senators looking in to the matter.  Kudos.

That liberal Hollywood is at it again.  Next Friday, they’re coming out with more anti-Bush propaganda.

It’s a movie called "Curious George", about a "monkey" who sticks his nose into other people’s business.

Already, billboards are popping up in major cities showing George with a pair of binoculars.

Unbelievable.