[Mb-civic] Domestic Lying and Feingold's response

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

Today's commentary:
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2006-02/06solomon.cfm

==================================

ZNet Commentary
Domestic Lying: The Question That Journalists Don't Ask Bush 
February 07, 2006 
By Norman Solomon 

   With great fanfare, Oprah Winfrey asked James Frey a question that
   mainstream journalists refuse to ask George W. Bush: "Why would you
   lie?"

   Many pundits and news outlets chortled at the unmasking of Frey as a
   liar. The reverberations spanned from schlock media to highbrow
   outlets. On Jan. 27, the same day that the PBS "NewsHour With Jim
   Lehrer" devoted an entire segment to what happened, the New York Times
   supplemented its page-one coverage with an editorial that concluded
   "Ms. Winfrey gave the audience, including us, what it was hoping for: a
   demand to hear the truth."

   A key reality of the National Security Agency spying story is:
   President Bush lied. But routinely missing from media coverage is a
   demand to hear the truth.

   More than two years after he started the NSA's domestic spying without
   warrants, Bush was unequivocal. During a speech in Buffalo on April 20,
   2004, he said: "Any time you hear the United States government talking
   about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing
   has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down
   terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so."

   The next day, Bush went out of his way to reinforce the same lie.
   "White House briefing records show Bush made similar remarks about the
   sanctity of court orders for wiretaps in a speech in Hershey, Pa., the
   day after he spoke in Buffalo," according to a front-page article in
   the Buffalo News on Dec. 25, 2005.

   Frey lied about his personal life in a book, and that infuriated Oprah
   Winfrey. "It is difficult for me to talk to you, because I really feel
   duped," she said, confronting him in the midst of the Jan. 26 telecast.
   "I feel duped. But more importantly, I feel that you betrayed millions
   of readers."

   Yet the journalists who interview Bush aren't willing to question him
   in similar terms.

   The president didn't merely betray millions of readers. He betrayed
   hundreds of millions of citizens.

   Bush lied about basic civil liberties in the United States. Instead of
   relying on euphemisms, the news media should directly confront him with
   the question: "Why would you lie?"

   During the "Oprah" show, while lecturing a powerful book-publishing
   executive who had served as an enabler for the author's mendacity,
   Winfrey declared: "That needs to change." But what about the powerful
   news-media executives who keep enabling the president's mendacity?

   When Frey tried to weasel out of responsibility for concocting a phony
   story about a root canal without anesthetic, the host interrupted after
   the words "I've struggled with the idea of it --"

   "No, the lie of it," Winfrey said. "That's a lie. It's not an idea,
   James, that's a lie."

   But high-profile journalists are unwilling to confront President Bush
   on national television with such clarity: "That's a lie. It's not an
   idea, George, that's a lie."

______________________________

Norman Solomon's latest book is "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits
Keep Spinning Us to Death." For information, go to: www.WarMadeEasy.com

--------

http://progressive.org/mag_wx020806
Feingold Tells It Like It Is
By Matthew Rothschild
February 8, 2006

The newspapers are full of stories about the Democrats not being able to find their 
voice.

But there is at least one Democrat who doesn’t have laryngitis.

And that’s Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin.

During the Gonzales hearing on February 6, Feingold grilled the Attorney General for 
misleading the Senate during his confirmation hearings in January 2005.

But he didn’t stop there.

On the Senate floor on February 7, he went after Gonzales’s boss.

Feingold said: The NSA “program is breaking the law, and this President is breaking 
the law. Not only that, he is misleading the American people in his efforts to justify his 
program.”

And he took this accusation to its logical conclusion, or at least partly there: “When 
someone breaks the law, when someone misleads the public in an attempt to justify 
his actions, he needs to be held accountable. The President of the United States has 
broken the law. The President of the United States is trying to mislead the American 
people. And he needs to be held accountable.”

Feingold rightly pointed out that “this goes way beyond party, and way beyond 
politics.” As he put it, “What the President has done here is to break faith with the 
American people.”

Feingold proceeded to rip apart the flimsy rationales that Bush and Gonzales have 
offered to justify their actions. “The President’s defense of his actions is deeply 
cynical, deeply misleading, and deeply troubling,” Feingold said.

And he didn’t spare his fellow members of Congress, either. Feingold took particular 
offense at the legislators—Republicans and some Democrats—who gave Bush a 
rousing ovation for defending warrantless domestic spying during his State of the 
Union address.

“How is that worthy of applause?” Feingold asked. “Since when do we celebrate our 
commander in chief for violating our most basic freedoms, and misleading the 
American people in the process? When did we start to stand up and cheer for 
breaking the law? In that moment at the State of the Union, I felt ashamed.”

He implored his colleagues to do their constitutional duty.

“The President is not a king,” he said. “And the Congress is not a king’s court. Our job 
is not to stand up and cheer when the President breaks the law. Our job is to stand up 
and demand accountability, to stand up and check the power of an out-of-control 
executive branch.”

That’s the type of attitude we need more of today, if we are to save our democracy.

Below is the full text of Senator Feingold’s speech:
Statement of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold
On the President’s Warrantless Wiretapping Program

February 7, 2006
As Prepared for Delivery from the Senate Floor

Mr. President, last week the President of the United States gave his State of the 
Union address, where he spoke of America’s leadership in the world, and called on all 
of us to “lead this world toward freedom.” Again and again, he invoked the principle of 
freedom, and how it can transform nations, and empower people around the world.

But, almost in the same breath, the President openly acknowledged that he has 
ordered the government to spy on Americans, on American soil, without the warrants 
required by law.

The President issued a call to spread freedom throughout the world, and then he 
admitted that he has deprived Americans of one of their most basic freedoms under 
the Fourth Amendment -- to be free from unjustified government intrusion.

The President was blunt. He said that he had authorized the NSA’s domestic spying 
program, and he made a number of misleading arguments to defend himself. His 
words got rousing applause from Republicans, and even some Democrats.

The President was blunt, so I will be blunt: This program is breaking the law, and this 
President is breaking the law. Not only that, he is misleading the American people in 
his efforts to justify this program.

How is that worthy of applause? Since when do we celebrate our commander in chief 
for violating our most basic freedoms, and misleading the American people in the 
process? When did we start to stand up and cheer for breaking the law? In that 
moment at the State of the Union, I felt ashamed.

Congress has lost its way if we don’t hold this President accountable for his actions.

The President suggests that anyone who criticizes his illegal wiretapping program 
doesn’t understand the threat we face. But we do. Every single one of us is committed 
to stopping the terrorists who threaten us and our families.

Defeating the terrorists should be our top national priority, and we all agree that we 
need to wiretap them to do it. In fact, it would be irresponsible not to wiretap terrorists. 
But we have yet to see any reason why we have to trample the laws of the United 
States to do it. The President’s decision that he can break the law says far more about 
his attitude toward the rule of law than it does about the laws themselves.

This goes way beyond party, and way beyond politics. What the President has done 
here is to break faith with the American people. In the State of the Union, he also said 
that “we must always be clear in our principles” to get support from friends and allies 
that we need to fight terrorism. So let’s be clear about a basic American principle: 
When someone breaks the law, when someone misleads the public in an attempt to 
justify his actions, he needs to be held accountable. The President of the United 
States has broken the law. The President of the United States is trying to mislead the 
American people. And he needs to be held accountable.

Unfortunately, the President refuses to provide any details about this domestic spying 
program. Not even the full Intelligence committees know the details, and they were 
specifically set up to review classified information and oversee the intelligence 
activities of our government. Instead, the President says – “Trust me.”

This is not the first time we’ve heard that. In the lead-up to the Iraq war, the 
Administration went on an offensive to get the American public, the Congress, and the 
international community to believe its theory that Saddam Hussein was developing 
weapons of mass destruction, and even that he had ties to Al Qaeda. The President 
painted a dire –
and inaccurate – picture of Saddam Hussein’s capability and intent, and we invaded 
Iraq on that basis. To make matters worse, the Administration misled the country 
about what it would take to stabilize and reconstruct Iraq after the conflict. We were 
led to believe that this was going to be a short endeavor, and that our troops would be 
home soon.

We all recall the President’s “Mission Accomplished” banner on the aircraft carrier on 
May 1, 2003. In fact, the mission was not even close to being complete. More than 
2100 total deaths have occurred after the President declared an end to major combat 
operations in May of 2003, and over 16,600 American troops have been wounded in 
Iraq. The President misled the American people and grossly miscalculated the true 
challenge of stabilizing and rebuilding Iraq.

In December, we found out that the President has authorized wiretaps of Americans 
without the court orders required by law. He says he is only wiretapping people with 
links to terrorists, but how do we know? We don’t. The President is unwilling to let a 
neutral judge make sure that is the case. He will not submit this program to an 
ndependent branch of government to make sure he’s not violating the rights of law-
abiding Americans.

So I don’t want to hear again that this Administration has shown it can be trusted. It 
hasn’t. And that is exactly why the law requires a judge to review these wiretaps.

It is up to Congress to hold the President to account. We held a hearing on the 
domestic spying program in the Judiciary Committee yesterday, where Attorney 
General Gonzales was a witness. We expect there will be other hearings. That is a 
start, but it will take more than just hearings to get the job done.

We know that in part because the President’s Attorney General has already shown a 
willingness to mislead the Congress.

At the hearing yesterday, I reminded the Attorney General about his testimony during 
his confirmation hearings in January 2005, when I asked him whether the President 
had the power to authorize warrantless wiretaps in violation of the criminal law. We 
didn’t know it then, but the President had authorized the NSA program three years 
before, when the Attorney General was White House Counsel. At his confirmation 
hearing, the Attorney General first tried to dismiss my question as “hypothetical.” He 
then testified that “it’s not the policy or the agenda of this President to authorize 
actions that would be in contravention of our criminal statutes.”

Well, Mr. President, wiretapping American citizens on American soil without the 
required warrant is in direct contravention of our criminal statutes. The Attorney 
General knew that, and he knew about the NSA program when he sought the 
Senate’s approval for his nomination to be Attorney General. He wanted the Senate 
and the American people to think that the President had not acted on the extreme 
legal theory that the President has the power as Commander in Chief to disobey the 
criminal laws of this country. But he had. The Attorney General had some explaining 
to do, and he didn’t do it yesterday. Instead he parsed words, arguing that what he 
said was truthful because he didn’t believe that the President’s actions violated the 
law.

But he knew what I was asking, and he knew he was misleading the Committee in his 
response. If he had been straightforward, he would have told the committee that in his 
opinion, the President has the authority to authorize warrantless wiretaps. My question 
wasn’t about whether such illegal wiretapping was going on – like almost everyone in 
Congress, I didn’t know about the program then. It was a question about how the 
nominee to be Attorney General viewed the law. This nominee wanted to be 
confirmed, and so he let a misleading statement about one of the central issues of his 
confirmation – his view of executive power – stay on the record until the New York 
Times revealed the program.

The rest of the Attorney General’s performance at yesterday’s hearing certainly did 
not give me any comfort, either. He continued to push the Administration’s weak legal 
arguments, continued to insinuate that anyone who questions this program doesn’t 
want to fight terrorism, and refused to answer basic questions about what powers this 
Administration is claiming. We still need a lot of answers from this Administration.

But let’s put aside the Attorney General for now. The burden is not just on him to 
come clean -- the President has some explaining to do. The President’s defense of 
his actions is deeply cynical, deeply misleading, and deeply troubling.

To find out that the President of the United States has violated the basic rights of the 
American people is chilling. And then to see him publicly embrace his actions – and to 
see so many Members of Congress cheer him on – is appalling.

The President has broken the law, and he has made it clear that he will continue to do 
so. But the President is not a king. And the Congress is not a king’s court. Our job is 
not to stand up and cheer when the President breaks the law. Our job is to stand up 
and demand accountability, to stand up and check the power of an out-of-control 
executive branch.

That is one of the reasons that the framers put us here - to ensure balance between 
the branches of government, not to act as a professional cheering section.

We need answers. Because no one, not the President, not the Attorney General, and 
not any of their defenders in this body, has been able to explain why it is necessary to 
break the law to defend against terrorism. And I think that’s because they can’t explain 
it.

Instead, this administration reacts to anyone who questions this illegal program by 
saying that those of us who demand the truth and stand up for our rights and 
freedoms have a pre-9/11 view of the world.

In fact, the President has a pre-1776 view of the world.

Our Founders lived in dangerous times, and they risked everything for freedom. 
Patrick Henry said, "Give me liberty or give me death." The President's pre-1776 
mentality is hurting America. It is fracturing the foundation on which our country has 
stood for 230 years. The President can't just bypass two branches of government, and 
obey only those laws he wants to obey. Deciding unilaterally which of our freedoms 
still apply in the fight against terrorism is unacceptable and needs to be stopped 
immediately.

Let’s examine for a moment some of the President’s attempts to defend his actions. 
His arguments have changed over time, of course. They have to – none of them hold 
up under even casual scrutiny, so he can’t rely on one single explanation. As each 
argument crumbles beneath him, he moves on to a new one, until that, too, is 
debunked, and on and on he goes.

In the State of the Union, the President referred to Presidents in American history who 
cited executive authority to order warrantless surveillance. But of course those past 
presidents – like Wilson and Roosevelt – were acting before the Supreme Court 
decided in 1967 that our communications are protected by the Fourth Amendment, 
and before Congress decided in 1978 that the executive branch can no longer 
unilaterally decide which Americans to wiretap. The Attorney General yesterday was 
unable to give me one example of a President who, since 1978 when FISA was 
passed, has authorized warrantless wiretaps outside of FISA.

So that argument is baseless, and it’s deeply troubling that the President of the United 
States would so obviously mislead the Congress and American public. That hardly 
honors the founders’ idea that the President should address the Congress on the 
state of our union.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was passed in 1978 to create a secret court, 
made up of judges who develop national security expertise, to issue warrants for 
surveillance of terrorists and spies. These are the judges from whom the Bush 
Administration has obtained thousands of warrants since 9/11. The Administration has 
almost never had a warrant request rejected by those judges. They have used the 
FISA Court thousands of times, but at the same time they assert that FISA is an “old 
law” or “out of date” and they can’t comply with it. Clearly they can and do comply with 
it – except when they don’t. Then they just arbitrarily decide to go around these 
judges, and around the law.

The Administration has said that it ignored FISA because it takes too long to get a 
warrant under that law. But we know that in an emergency, where the Attorney 
General believes that surveillance must begin before a court order can be obtained, 
FISA permits the wiretap to be executed immediately as long as the government goes 
to the court within 72 hours. The Attorney General has complained that the 
emergency provision does not give him enough flexibility, he has complained that 
getting a FISA application together or getting the necessary approvals takes too long. 
But the problems he has cited are bureaucratic barriers that the executive branch put 
in place, and could easily remove if it wanted.

FISA also permits the Attorney General to authorize unlimited warrantless electronic 
surveillance in the United States during the 15 days following a declaration of war, to 
allow time to consider any amendments to FISA required by a wartime emergency. 
That is the time period that Congress specified. Yet the President thinks that he can 
do this indefinitely.

In the State of the Union, the President also argued that federal courts had approved 
the use of presidential authority that he was invoking. But that turned out to be 
misleading as well. When I asked the Attorney General about this, he could point me 
to no court – not the Supreme Court or any other court – that has considered whether, 
after FISA was enacted, the President nonetheless had the authority to bypass it and 
authorize warrantless wiretaps. Not one court. The Administration’s effort to find 
support for what it has done in snippets of other court decisions would be laughable if 
this issue were not so serious.

The President knows that FISA makes it a crime to wiretap Americans in the United 
States without a warrant or a court order. Why else would he have assured the public, 
over and over again, that he was getting warrants before engaging in domestic 
surveillance?

Here’s what the President said on April 20, 2004: “Now, by the way, any time you hear 
the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires – a wiretap requires a 
court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we’re talking about chasing 
down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so.”

And again, on July 14, 2004: “The government can’t move on wiretaps or roving 
wiretaps without getting a court order.”

The President was understandably eager in these speeches to make it clear that 
under his administration, law enforcement was using the FISA Court to obtain 
warrants before wiretapping. That is understandable, since wiretapping Americans on 
American soil without a warrant is against the law.

And listen to what the President said on June 9, 2005: “Law enforcement officers 
need a federal judge’s permission to wiretap a foreign terrorist’s phone, a federal 
judge’s permission to track his calls, or a federal judge’s permission to search his 
property. Officers must meet strict standards to use any of these tools. And these 
standards are fully consistent with the Constitution of the U.S.”

Now that the public knows about the domestic spying program, he has had to change 
course. He has looked around for arguments to cloak his actions. And all of them are 
completely threadbare.

The President has argued that Congress gave him authority to wiretap Americans on 
U.S. soil without a warrant when it passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force 
after September 11, 2001. Mr. President, that is ridiculous. Members of Congress did 
not think this resolution gave the President blanket authority to order these 
warrantless wiretaps. We all know that. Anyone in this body who would tell you 
otherwise either wasn’t here at the time or isn’t telling the truth. We authorized the 
President to use military force in Afghanistan, a necessary and justified response to 
September 11. We did not authorize him to wiretap American citizens on American 
soil without going through the process that was set up nearly three decades ago 
precisely to facilitate the domestic surveillance of terrorists – with the approval of a 
judge. That is why both Republicans and Democrats have questioned this theory.

This particular claim is further undermined by congressional approval of the Patriot 
Act just a few weeks after we passed the Authorization for the Use of Military Force. 
The Patriot Act made it easier for law enforcement to conduct surveillance on 
suspected terrorists and spies, while maintaining FISA’s baseline requirement of 
judicial approval for wiretaps of Americans in the U.S. It is ridiculous to think that 
Congress would have negotiated and enacted all the changes to FISA in the Patriot 
Act if it thought it had just authorized the President to ignore FISA in the AUMF.

In addition, in the intelligence authorization bill passed in December 2001, we 
extended the emergency authority in FISA, at the Administration’s request, from 24 to 
72 hours. Why do that if the President has the power to ignore FISA? That makes no 
sense at all.

The President has also said that his inherent executive power gives him the power to 
approve this program. But here the President is acting in direct violation of a criminal 
statute. That means his power is, as Justice Jackson said in the steel seizure cases 
half a century ago, “at its lowest ebb.” A recent letter from a group of law professors 
and former executive branch officials points out that “every time the Supreme Court 
has confronted a statute limiting the Commander-in-Chief’s authority, it has upheld the 
statute.” The Senate reports issued when FISA was enacted confirm the 
understanding that FISA overrode any pre-existing inherent authority of the President. 
As the 1978 Senate Judiciary Committee report stated, FISA “recognizes no inherent 
power of the president in this area.” And “Congress has declared that this statute, not 
any claimed presidential power, controls.” Contrary to what the President told the 
country in the State of the Union, no court has ever approved warrantless surveillance 
in violation of FISA.

The President’s claims of inherent executive authority, and his assertions that the 
courts have approved this type of activity, are baseless.

The President has argued that periodic internal executive branch review provides an 
adequate check on the program. He has even characterized this periodic review as a 
safeguard for civil liberties. But we don’t know what this check involves. And we do 
know that Congress explicitly rejected this idea of unilateral executive decision-
making in this area when it passed FISA.

Finally, the president has tried to claim that informing a handful of congressional 
leaders, the so-called Gang of Eight, somehow excuses breaking the law. Of course, 
several of these members said they weren’t given the full story. And all of them were 
prohibited from discussing what they were told. So the fact that they were informed 
under these extraordinary circumstances does not constitute congressional oversight, 
and it most certainly does not constitute congressional approval of the program. 
Indeed, it doesn’t even comply with the National Security Act, which requires the entire 
memberships of the House and Senate Intelligence Committee to be “fully and 
currently informed of the intelligence activities of the United States.”

In addition, we now know that some of these members expressed concern about the 
program. The Administration ignored their protests. Just last week, one of the eight 
members of Congress who has been briefed about the program, Congresswoman 
Jane Harman, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said she sees 
no reason why the Administration cannot accomplish its goals within the law as 
currently written.

None of the President’s arguments explains or excuses his conduct, or the NSA’s 
domestic spying program. Not one. It is hard to believe that the President has the 
audacity to claim that they do. It is a strategy that really hinges on the credibility of the 
office of the Presidency itself. If you just insist that you didn’t break the law, you 
haven’t broken the law. It reminds me of what Richard Nixon said after he had left 
office: “Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal.” But that is not 
how our constitutional democracy works. Making those kinds of arguments is 
damaging the credibility of the Presidency.

And what’s particularly disturbing is how many members of Congress have 
responded. They stood up and cheered. They stood up and cheered.

Justice Louis Brandeis once wrote: “Experience should teach us to be most on our 
guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to 
freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The 
greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-
meaning but without understanding.”

The President’s actions are indefensible. Freedom is an enduring principle. It is not 
something to celebrate in one breath, and ignore the next. Freedom is at the heart of 
who we are as a nation, and as a people. We cannot be a beacon of freedom for the 
world unless we protect our own freedoms here at home.

The President was right about one thing. In his address, he said “We love our 
freedom, and we will fight to keep it.”

Yes, Mr. President. We do love our freedom, and we will fight to keep it. We will fight 
to defeat the terrorists who threaten the safety and security of our families and loved 
ones. And we will fight to protect the rights of law-abiding Americans against intrusive 
government power.

As the President said, we must always be clear in our principles. So let us be clear: 
We cherish the great and noble principle of freedom, we will fight to keep it, and we 
will hold this President – and anyone who violates those freedoms – accountable for 
their actions. In a nation built on freedom, the President is not a king, and no one is 
above the law.

I yield the floor.



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