Pull in the wire, call in the dogs
Remember that warrantless domestic wiretapping plan that the President said was so essential to protecting us from terrorism?
President George W. Bush has decided not to reauthorize the controversial domestic warrantless surveillance program for terrorism suspects and to put it under the authority of a secret special court, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said on Wednesday."The president has determined not to reauthorize the Terrorist Surveillance Program when the current authorization expires," Gonzales wrote in a letter to Senate leaders.
"Any electronic surveillance that was occurring as part of the Terrorist Surveillance Program will now be conducted subject to the approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court," Gonzales said.
The program, adopted after the September 11 attacks, allowed the government to eavesdrop on the international phone calls and e-mails of U.S. citizens without obtaining a warrant, if those wiretaps are made to track suspected al Qaeda operatives.
Critics have said the program violated the U.S. Constitution and a 1978 law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which made it illegal to spy on U.S. citizens in the United States without the approval of the special court.
Yeah, critics have said that. Because it plainly does. And each one of the reauthorizations the president has signed every few weeks over the life of the program could well constitute a separate violation of FISA. Each violation carries a penalty of five years in prison and a fine.
The president insisted in 2004 that a wiretap of Americans in this country requires a court order. Then, after the New York Times disclosed the existence of his illegal program, he insisted that even if the program did violate FISA, he had the right to run it anyway, an argument based on no existing constitutional principle, statute or regulation and pretty much already rejected 50 years ago in the Supreme Court's Youngstown case.
It would be tempting to think the president declined to reauthorize his program because he finally had come to the conclusion that it was illegal and wrong. And it would be downright awesome to think there was a basis for believing that he was declining to reauthorize now because the threat of terrorism had greatly subsided.
But I see no evidence that either is true.
I have a guess -- that the substance and timing of this decision has to do with the Democratic takeover of Congress and some promised hearings -- but that's only a guess.
Whatever the reason, and notwithstanding the fact that this program never should have been authorized in the first place, this is excellent news. With it, the country takes a big step back toward the rule of law.