AG Michael Mukasey on Bush’s failures
March 31st, 2008, 7:41 am · Post a Comment · posted by fsherman
Okay, that’s not how Mukasey put it in his speech in San Francisco this weekend. In explaining why warrantless surveillance and telecom immunity are vital, he asserted that “(officials) shouldn’t need a warrant when somebody with a phone in Iraq picks up a phone and calls somebody in the United States because that’s the call that we may really want to know about. And before 9/11, that’s the call that we didn’t know about. We knew that there has been a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn’t know precisely where it went.”
Is Mukasey saying that prior to 9/11, the administration knew someone was calling from a terrorist safe house in Afghanistan and did nothing? Didn’t apply for a warrant to listen in? Didn’t use the FISA surveillance rule that allows them to apply for a warrant three days after surveillance starts? Why the heck not?
Or is he saying that the 9/11 terrorists were in contact and making phone call to their boss, but we didn’t know it at the time? In which case, that’s more an indictment of our government’s failure to put the picture of the plot together (see the 9/11 Commission’s report for all the ways we stumbled) than a justification for wireless eavesdropping: What good would having the power of warrantless surveillance done if we didn’t know there was a call to eavesdrop on?
Or is his real point (I’m assuming he has a point other than “Comrades should obey Supreme Leader Bush and stop questioning the state.”) that if the CIA and NSA didn’t have to worry about warrants and Fourth Amendment and probable cause, they could just eavesdrop on everyone and that way nobody would escape their gaze? So if we sacrifice all privacy in communications, the government can keep us safe for ever and ever.
Apparently the administration still hasn’t caught on that we’re not scared enough to give up the Bill of Rights yet.
