Bush changes his mind and now says he must go to the FISA courts

[JSAautomotive]

Gee Stage? I wonder why all of a sudden Roberto Gonzales thought he needed to go through the FISA courts now? Hmmmm??? Got any suggestions??

Secret court to govern wiretapping plan

By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer
Wed Jan 17, 6:50 PM ET

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration has agreed to shift course and let a secret but independent panel of federal judges oversee the government's controversial domestic spying program.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court will have final say in approving wiretaps on communications involving people with suspected terror links, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Wednesday in a letter to the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Since Jan. 10, when the court began overseeing the program, at least one request has been approved to monitor communications of a person believed to be linked to al-Qaida or an associated terror group.

In his letter to Sens. Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record), D-Vt., and Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa., Gonzales wrote that "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."

The Bush administration secretly launched the Terrorist Surveillance Program in 2001 to monitor international phone calls and e-mails to or from the United States involving people suspected by the government of having terrorist links. Gonzales said Bush would not reauthorize the program.

The shift in oversight means that all wiretaps or other eavesdropping tools by the federal government must be approved by court order. Previously, the program allowed investigators to spy without a warrant — resulting in widespread criticism from lawmakers and others who questioned the legality.

"The issue has never been whether to monitor suspected terrorists but doing it legally and with proper checks and balances to prevent abuses," Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said Wednesday in welcoming the change. "Providing efficient but meaningful court review is a major step toward addressing those concerns."

The turnaround came after more than a year of stubborn insistence by the White House that oversight by the secret court was not required by law and, in fact, would be a hindrance to stopping terrorists. The FISA court was established in the late 1970s to review requests for warrants to conduct surveillance inside the United States.

Bush has maintained that the warrantless surveillance program's existence was "fully consistent with my constitutional responsibilities and authorities," and has said he would continue to reauthorize it "for as long as our nation faces a continuing threat from al-Qaida and related groups." He has said circumventing the FISA court "enables us to move faster and quicker."

On Wednesday, the White House said it is satisfied with the new guidelines to address administration officials' concerns about national security.

"The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has put together its guidelines and its rules and those have met administration concerns about speed and agility when it comes to responding to bits of intelligence where we may to be able to save American lives," White House press secretary Tony Snow said.

Snow said he could not explain why those concerns could not have been addressed before the program was started. He said the president will not reauthorize the present program because the new rules will serve as guideposts.

A federal judge in Detroit last August declared the program unconstitutional, saying it violates the rights to free speech and privacy and the separation of powers. In October, a three-judge panel of the Cincinnati-based appeals court ruled that the administration could keep the program in place while it appeals the Detroit decision.

Additionally, the Justice Department's inspector general is investigating the agency's use of information gathered in the spying program. In testimony last fall in front of the Senate panel, FBI Director Robert Mueller said he was not allowed to discuss classified details that could show whether it has curbed terrorist activity in the United States.

Congressional intelligence committees have already been briefed on the court's orders, Gonzales said in his letter. It was sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee the day before he is set to testify before the panel, which oversees the Justice Department.

Some Democrats said the change still may not go far enough.

"While this may be a step in the right direction, it should not deflect the attention of the American people or the Congress from seeking answers about the current and past operation of this program," said House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (news, bio, voting record), D-Mich.
Secret court to govern wiretapping plan - Yahoo! News

[STAGE 2]

Originally Posted by JSAautomotive

Gee Stage? I wonder why all of a sudden Roberto Gonzales thought he needed to go through the FISA courts now? Hmmmm??? Got any suggestions??

Sure I do. Now that the dems have control of congress, there would have been political witchhunt after witchhunt. By doing this, Bush took the wind out of their sails and given them one less reason to mess with his security programs, allowing the important people to do their jobs and go after the bad guys.

I really applaud Bush for this. I really do. Everything worthwhile that the dems touch turns to pot. With the stakes as they are, we can't afford to have our security programs messed with.

Best of all, its Bush's decision. He's still the president, still the commander in chief and still the man with the size 12 ready to insert where needed. Nothing you say changes that nor denigrates the power of the executive branch.


And most importantly, what I said still stands. His program was not and will not be ruled unconstitutional by scotus.

Whoop there it is.

[JSAautomotive]

Originally Posted by Stage2

Sure I do. Now that the dems have control of congress, there would have been political witchhunt after witchhunt. By doing this, Bush took the wind out of their sails and given them one less reason to mess with his security programs, allowing the important people to do their jobs and go after the bad guys.

I really applaud Bush for this. I really do. Everything worthwhile that the dems touch turns to pot. With the stakes as they are, we can't afford to have our security programs messed with.

Best of all, its Bush's decision. He's still the president, still the commander in chief and still the man with the size 12 ready to insert where needed. Nothing you say changes that nor denigrates the power of the executive branch.

And most importantly, what I said still stands. His program was not and will not be ruled unconstitutional by scotus.

Whoop there it is.

Nobody took the wind out of anybodies sails you ding-a-ling. The Dems are just getting started. I am going to have a big laugh with you when this is all said and done.

Pay attention sonny boy and learn something.

White House Shifting Tactics in Spy Cases

By ADAM LIPTAK
Published: January 19, 2007
In a four-paragraph letter on Wednesday announcing that the Bush administration had reversed its position and would submit its domestic surveillance program to judicial supervision, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales used one phrase three times. A secret court, he said, had fashioned a way to allow the program to be monitored by the judiciary without compromising the need for “speed and agility.”

That phrase also captures, some critics say, the administration’s moving-target litigation strategy, one that often seeks to change the terms of the debate just as a claim of executive authority is about to be tested in the courts or in Congress.

On Wednesday, the administration announced that an unnamed judge on the secret court, in a nonadversarial proceeding that apparently cannot be appealed, had issued orders that apparently both granted surveillance requests and set out some ground rules for how such requests would be handled.

The details remained sketchy yesterday, but critics of the administration said they suspected that one goal of the new arrangements was to derail lawsuits challenging the program in conventional federal courts.

“It’s another clear example,” said Ann Beeson, associate legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, “of the government playing a shell game to avoid accountability and judicial scrutiny.”

In other cases, too, the timing of litigation decisions by the government has been suggestive.

Shortly before the Supreme Court heard a set of three detainee cases in 2004, the administration reversed course and allowed two Americans held incommunicado by the military to meet with their lawyers, mooting that issue.

After the court ruled that one of the men, Yaser Hamdi, could challenge his detention in court, the administration instead freed him and sent him to Saudi Arabia.

And just as the Supreme Court was considering whether to review the case of the second man, Jose Padilla, he was transferred to the criminal justice system last year, mooting his appeal.

Paul W. Butler, a former federal prosecutor who served as special assistant to Donald H. Rumsfeld when he was secretary of defense, said the administration’s critics were too quick to view ordinary developments as nefarious ones.

“You do have to ascribe some good faith,” said Mr. Butler, now a partner with the Washington law firm of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. “The government uses presidential authority when they think it’s necessary and the law does not provide the specific authority they need. If there is a road that can be taken, operating according to statutes or putting people into the criminal justice system when that makes sense, they will do that.”

Like other administrations, even when this one alters course, it almost never concedes that its earlier actions were mistaken.

In the case of the eavesdropping program, the administration continues to maintain that it is free to operate without court approval. Its decision to submit to the secret court, administration lawyers said, was voluntary. At a briefing Wednesday, almost as an afterthought, a senior Justice Department official said, “There’s obviously an advantage to having all three branches involved.”

The announcement about the surveillance program came two weeks before a federal appeals court in Cincinnati was to hear the first appellate argument about the lawfulness of the program. (Gee?? I wonder why??) Government lawyers now say that case is moot, but their claim is open to question.

The usual rule is that cases seeking relief in the future are indeed moot when the relief they seek is granted. But there is an exception, said David Cole, a lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has challenged the program in a separate lawsuit filed in New York.

He cited a series of Supreme Court decisions in which the defendants had voluntarily done what the lawsuits were seeking. Such cases are moot, the court ruled in 1968, for instance, only if it is “absolutely clear that the allegedly wrongful behavior could not reasonably be expected to recur.”

Because the administration has reserved the right to continue the program, Mr. Cole said, the courts should rule on whether it violated a 1978 law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Constitution.

A third case, from Oregon, is almost certainly not moot. In addition to asking the court to stop surveillance without warrants in the future, that suit asks for money as damages for past surveillance.

The Oregon case, brought by an Islamic charity and two of its lawyers, differs from the Cincinnati appeal and the New York suit because the plaintiffs in it say they have seen a classified document confirming that their communications were actually intercepted.

“We’re certainly center stage now,” said Jon B. Eisenberg, who represents the charity, Al Haramain Islamic Foundation, and the lawyers.

Mr. Gonzales, speaking to the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday said that the recent orders involved a creative reading of the 1978 law, often called FISA. After the Sept. 11 attacks, he said, administration lawyers determined that the program could not be reconciled with the law but later decided to “push the envelope.”

Statements like that frustrate the administration’s critics.

“It is very difficult to know if this order in fact satisfies FISA,” Mr. Cole said.

Because FISA applications are one-sided affairs, with no one arguing the other side, there is no losing party who can appeal from the orders. In a letter on Wednesday, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, the presiding judge of the 11-member court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, said she would have no objection to the release of the relevant orders to lawmakers if the Justice Department approved.

But Mr. Gonzales indicated that the department would object to the release of at least the “operational details” disclosed in the orders.

"The announcement today is welcome news,” said Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who leads the Intelligence Committee. “But it is also confirmation that the administration’s go-it-alone approach, effectively excluding Congress and the courts and operating outside the law, was unnecessary.”

Mr. Rockefeller added, “I intend to move forward with the committee’s review of all aspects of this program’s legality and effectiveness.”

Anybody with a brain understands exactly why Bush and Gonzales decieded to not continue without the FISA courts approval. Because the Dems now have supoena power and they can now demand answers.

Your trust of this proven liar bothers me. What exactly is propelling you to support this POS? Stage? Are you a paid bot from the RNC?? Trying to convince people here at TB.COM that spying on us Americans is a good thing?

I think so.

Your goose will be cooked soon enough.

I'll be back to smear this in your young and nieve face when all the dust has settled.

BONECRUSHED AGAIN!!!!! WHOOP!!!! WHOOP!!!! WHOOP!!!!

[STAGE 2]

I may be young, but your the one who's nieve... moron.

[Gothmog]

I saw Gonzalez on MacNeil/Lehrer and he gave the same ole tired lame LIE excuse for why they didnt use the FISA court.

He said 'there was time sensitive evidence that we couldnt wait for a warrant on.'

The interviewer reminded him that he could get a FISA warrant retroactively.

Gonzalez gave some more double talk, then they dropped it.

[The Blob]

Originally Posted by Gothmog

The interviewer reminded him that he could get a FISA warrant retroactively.

A logical person then might think "What's the point?"

If you can do something... then get permission for it after the fact... what is the point of bothering to get permission? It's already done.