Spy Lies

Remember these quotes?

The Washington Post this past January...

Vice President Cheney said yesterday that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks might have been prevented if the Bush administration had had the power to secretly monitor conversations involving two of the hijackers without court orders...
Cheney said if the administration had the power “before 9/11, we might have been able to pick up on two of the hijackers who flew a jet into the Pentagon.”

...And CIA Director (and former NSA chief) Michael Hayden, also in January-

“Had this program been in effect prior to 9/11, it is my professional judgment that we would have detected some of the 9/11 al Qaeda operatives in the United States, and we would have identified them as such,” said Hayden, who now is principal deputy director of national intelligence.

Also- Attorney General Gonzales' recent testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Well hold onto your monocles, because Bloomberg News recently reported this-

The U.S. National Security Agency asked AT&T Inc. to help it set up a domestic call monitoring site seven months before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, lawyers claimed June 23 in court papers filed in New York federal court.

The allegation is part of a court filing adding AT&T, the nation's largest telephone company, as a defendant in a breach of privacy case filed earlier this month on behalf of Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. customers. The suit alleges that the three carriers, the NSA and President George W. Bush violated the Telecommunications Act of 1934 and the U.S. Constitution, and seeks money damages.

``The Bush Administration asserted this became necessary after 9/11,'' plaintiff's lawyer Carl Mayer said in a telephone interview. ``This undermines that assertion.''

Oop.

If more Bush administration lies fall in the woods and no one is around to care, does it make a sound?

Amazing how quickly this scandal is fading away, no? When the story first broke last December, Americans were outraged. Former Nixon White House counsel John Dean noted that, in acknowledging and defending the program, President Bush was "the first president to admit to an impeachable offense." This was serious stuff. And now here we are seven months later and our attention span has shifted; we just don't care anymore. If 24-hour cable channels, etc, had existed in 1972, Richard Nixon might've served out his second term in full. The other problem is that the more Big Brother revelations come out, the more the American people are beaten down by them and just give in. As an AP article on NYC subway bag searches said "the practice once thought of as a temporary imposition, with the potential to trample civil rights, remains in effect and is barely causing a stir." This sort of gradual acceptance is at play here in the still-unfolding NSA scandal.

I can't think of any way to reverse that. And that's a depressing thought.

The Great Society summarizes the significance of this report-

This argument completely undermines the President’s justification for completely ignoring the 1978 FISA law. Ever since it was disclosed by the treasonous, murderous plotters at the New York Times, the White House and their backwash of supporters charged that the program was necessary to fight terrorism since 9/11. Undoubtedly, these same people will hold steadfast and claim it was necessary prior to September 11.

But, given that the administration and the NSA had seven months prior to 9/11 to catch the hijackers and came up with nothing, zero, zippo, zilch — doesn’t that suggest that this program does not work?

Well they never could prove that it did, could they?

Finally, this is in addition to news via Rep. Hoekstra (R-MI) that the "Bush administration briefed the [House Intelligence Committee] panel on a 'significant' intelligence program only after a government whistle-blower alerted him to its existence and he pressed President Bush for details... 'But in this case, there was at least one major — what I consider significant — activity that we had not been briefed on that we have now been briefed on. And I want to set the standard there, that it is not optional for this president or any president or people in the executive community not to keep the intelligence committees fully informed of what they are doing,' [Hoekstra said]".

Translation: The President is keeping even more programs secret.

Are they legal? Do they violate the Constitution? Once again, that's not for us to know.




[PS- Related reading:
*NY Times: Congressman Says Program Was Disclosed by Informant
*TruthDig: Truthdigger of the Week: Rep. Peter Hoekstra]

[PPS- They were lying about the Abramoff visits too.]