Finally, some good may come from the Valerie Plame kerfuffle — if President Bush and Attorney
General Alberto Gonzalez have the stones to do what's right.
A grave crime was exposed Dec. 16th when New York Times reporters James Risen and Eric
Lichtblau published a story revealing President Bush authorized the National Security Agency to
listen in on conversations between al Qaida suspects abroad and people in the United States
without first obtaining a warrant.
"We're seeing clearly now that (President) Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a
dictator," wrote Newsweek's Jonathan Alter.
But the scandal was not the program Risen and Lichtblau wrote about. The scandal is that they
wrote about it.
The intercept program has uncovered al Qaida plots, and public exposure cripples it, Air Force
Gen. Michael Hayden said at a news conference Monday. Now deputy director of National
Intelligence, Hayden was head of the NSA went the intercept program was started.
Among the plots uncovered was one by Iyman Faris, a naturalized U.S. citizen living in Ohio, to
blow up the Brooklyn bridge, sources say. Faris discussed the plan on the phone with Khalid
Shaikh Mohammed, then al Qaida's operations officer.
Alter and others in the news media assert the intercept program is illegal, and unprecedented.
It is neither.
"The Department of Justice believes, and the case law supports, that the president has the
inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes,"
said Jamie Gorelick, deputy attorney general under President Clinton, in testimony to the
Senate Intelligence Committee on July 14th, 1994.
"It's important to understand that the rules and methodology for criminal searches are
inconsistent with the collection of foreign intelligence and would unduly frustrate the
president in carrying out his foreign intelligence responsibilities," she said.
Risen and Lichtblau chose not to mention this story, which appeared in the New York Times on
Nov. 7th, 1982:
"A federal appeals court has ruled that the National Security Agency may lawfully intercept
messages between United States citizens and people overseas, even if there is no cause to
believe the Americans are foreign agents."
Even the feckless Jimmy Carter issued on May 23rd, 1979, an executive order authorizing the
attorney general "to approve electronic surveillance to acquire foreign intelligence
information without a court order."
Carter cited as the authority for issuing his order the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
Congress had passed the year before, and which Alter and other hyperventilating hypocrites
claim Bush has violated.
Why would Carter think that? Perhaps he read — as evidently Alter hasn't — section 1802 of
the FISA law, which says: "the President, through the Attorney General, may authorize
electronic surveillance without a court order... to acquire foreign intelligence
information..."
In a 2002 case, the special court that hears appeals in FISA cases said the president "did have
inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information."
The news media didn't think warrantless electronic surveillance was a threat to our liberty
when Democratic presidents authorized it. National Review's Byron York, who dug up the
Gorelick testimony mentioned above, noted the Washington Post reported on it on Page A-19.
It is despicable, but not illegal, for the news media to publish vital national secrets leaked
to them. But the leakers have committed a felony.
Those who have demanded severe punishment for whoever it was who told reporters Valerie Plame
worked at the CIA have been remarkably forgiving about who leaked the existence of the NSA
intercept program, which — like the earlier leak of secret CIA prisons for al Qaida bigwigs
and unlike the Plame kerfuffle — has done serious harm to our national security.
But fortunately, by clapping New York Times reporter Judith Miller in irons until she talked,
overzealous special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has set a valuable precedent.
Attorney General Gonzalez should subpoena Mr. Risen and Mr. Lichtblau, and have them cited for
contempt of court if they do not disclose their source or sources. Maybe they could share Judy
Miller's old cell.
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