George W. Bush: Spy-In-Chief

The main justification (not a legal one, just general support) by Bush supporters of his warrantless wiretapping program is that it was necessary for national security after 9/11. Ignore that the surveillance that occurred could just have easily been done in compliance with the FISA law, that a 72-hour retroactive warrant clause is allowed for emergencies, that even greater accomodations were made for wartime after 9/11 already, and that the White House has still offered no viable reason why they needed to continuinly violate the law over several years other than that the paperwork was 'cumbersome'. Don't worry about it- leave that to the tin-foil-hat libs and their pesky constitutional fussing. Just remember 9/11.

Except... not so much.

A new report reveals that a domestic surveillance program began before 9/11:
Bush Authorized Domestic Spying Before 9/11 (TruthOut- Jason Leopold)

The National Security Agency advised President Bush in early 2001 that it had been eavesdropping on Americans during the course of its work monitoring suspected terrorists and foreigners believed to have ties to terrorist groups, according to a declassified document.

The NSA's vast data-mining activities began shortly after Bush was sworn in as president and the document contradicts his assertion that the 9/11 attacks prompted him to take the unprecedented step of signing a secret executive order authorizing the NSA to monitor a select number of American citizens thought to have ties to terrorist groups...

It further states-

On orders from Defense Department officials and President Bush, the agency kept a running list of the names of Americans in its system and made it readily available to a number of senior officials in the Bush administration, these sources said, which in essence meant the NSA was conducting a covert domestic surveillance operation in violation of the law...

...The NSA's domestic surveillance activities that began in early 2001 reached a boiling point shortly after 9/11, when senior administration officials and top intelligence officials asked the NSA to share that data with other intelligence officials who worked for the FBI and the CIA to hunt down terrorists that might be in the United States. However the NSA, on advice from its lawyers, destroyed the records, fearing the agency could be subjected to lawsuits by American citizens identified in the agency's raw intelligence reports.

Read the full article for more.

I'd say this is unbelievable, but I'm not really surprised. Hey, can I mention this again?

In related news, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said yesterday that he will testify publicly at a Senate hearing on the President's spying program to occur possibly next month. The list of things Senators need to ask him just got a lot longer.

Firedoglake again has a great roundup of information/thoughts on this: Something's Gotta Give

[Related link- Bush in the Briar Patch:
Why the president wants hearings on spying]