President Bush Caves On Warrantless Wiretapping??

A big twist in one of the most underreported scandals of the Bush administration-

President Bush has decided not to renew a program of domestic spying on terrorism suspects, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said on Wednesday, ending a tactic criticized for infringing on civil liberties.

Gonzales said electronic surveillance will be subject to approval from a secret but independent court, which Democrats in Congress and other critics have demanded during more than a year of fierce debate.

"The president has determined not to reauthorize the Terrorist Surveillance Program when the current authorization expires," Gonzales wrote in a letter to congressional leaders that disclosed the administration's shift in approach...

Sad day in America when it's newsworthy that the President has decided to follow the law.

Let's review... In late 2005, the NY Times revealed that the administration had been carrying out its eavesdropping without court-orders/warrants, as required by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the Fourth Amendment. This was in spite of numerous statements by the President in years past that all surveillance was done with court approval. The White House proceeded to argue that the warrantless spying was legal and constitutional, and that security concerns were so urgent they couldn't bother with the warrants (ignoring that existing law allowed for retroactive warrants to be granted in emergencies/war-time). How violating FISA made any operational difference was never addressed, and many reports indicated the spying was very widespread and collected information from innocent Americans.

Those arguments are moot, as they've conceded FISA has legal control over wiretapping.

That this comes right after the Democrats gain control of Congress is no coincidence. The White House knew their actual case on this issue was weak, and with their Republican Rubberstampers no longer in power, they were merely accepting the inevitable (my non-existent kingdom for political reality to catch up to the war like this!).

To me the big headline here is this... After one year of legal/constitutional battles, President Bush has been revealed to be a liar. This decision goes contrary to every argument they made-- that FISA was irrelevant and/or unconstitutional, that the warrantless program was all-important to our security, that even discussing it aids the terrorists, etc. I wonder how betrayed the Bush cultists feel now?

The White House, of course, is spinning this to avoid the image of them caving. Attorney General Gonzales is saying that these changes have been planned since early 2005 and have simply been finalized now. This is a complete lie. If it were true, there is no way that the White House wouldn't have told Congress and the courts of a planned compromise when the controversy (and talk of impeachment) arose last year.

Happy at the outcome; angry at how we got here. Glenn Greenwald has similar sentiments-

There is no repentance here, nor (more importantly) is there any rescission of their claimed powers of lawbreaking. Quite the contrary...

This "reversal" merely proves what we already knew -- that there was never any legitimate reason to violate FISA in the first place, and that all of the claims about how they had to in order to stop The Terrorists were complete fiction.

There is also concern that this concession may not be complete. As Greenwald notes, the White House still doesn't concede the actual legal/constitutional issues surrounding this scandal. So one shouldn't be too surprised to learn in the future that we're not getting the full story.

Josh Marshall looks at a NY Times piece which indicates that the White House may be simply planning to have the court rubberstamp whole programs of spying, as opposed to the individualized warrants required by law. Shayana Kadidal, of the Center for Constitutional Rights, has more detailed thoughts on that front.

Clearly, this story isn't over yet. And, of course, this could be a... you know... lie.

An upside? It shows that the administration is really, really scared at what congressional oversight will reveal. All the more reason for Chairman Leahy and others to heat up their investigations and get the answers the White House is so determined to hide. As Sen. Schumer said yesterday, "[W]hile I welcome the decision to stop conducting surveillance without judicial approval, the President now needs to respond fully to legitimate congressional questions about the complete history of this now-terminated illegal program."

FYI, Alberto Gonzales will be appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee today.