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Bush’s Snoopgate
The president was so desperate to kill The New York Times’
eavesdropping story, he summoned the paper’s editor and publisher to
the Oval Office. But it wasn’t just out of concern about national
security.
By Jonathan Alter
12/19/05 "Newsweek" -- -- Dec. 19, 2005 - Finally we have a
Washington scandal that goes beyond sex, corruption and political
intrigue to big issues like security versus liberty and the
reasonable bounds of presidential power. President Bush came out
swinging on Snoopgate—he made it seem as if those who didn’t agree
with him wanted to leave us vulnerable to Al Qaeda—but it will not
work. We’re seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him
license to act like a dictator, or in his own mind, no doubt, like
Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.
No wonder Bush was so desperate that The New York Times not publish
its story on the National Security Agency eavesdropping on American
citizens without a warrant, in what lawyers outside the
administration say is a clear violation of the 1978 Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act. I learned this week that on December
6, Bush summoned Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and executive
editor Bill Keller to the Oval Office in a futile attempt to talk
them out of running the story. The Times will not comment on the
meeting,
but one can only imagine the president’s desperation.
The problem was not that the disclosures would compromise national
security, as Bush claimed at his press conference. His comparison to
the damaging pre-9/11 revelation of Osama bin Laden’s use of a
satellite phone, which caused bin Laden to change tactics, is
fallacious; any Americans with ties to Muslim extremists—in fact,
all American Muslims, period—have long since suspected that the U.S.
government might be listening in to their conversations. Bush
claimed that “the fact that we are discussing this program is
helping the enemy.” But there is simply no evidence, or even
reasonable presumption, that this is so. And rather than the leaking
being a “shameful act,” it was the work of a patriot inside the
government who was trying to stop a presidential power grab.
No, Bush was desperate to keep the Times from running this important
story—which the paper had already inexplicably held for a
year—because he knew that it would reveal him as a law-breaker. He
insists he had “legal authority derived from the Constitution and
congressional resolution authorizing force.” But the Constitution
explicitly requires the president to obey the law. And the post 9/11
congressional resolution authorizing “all necessary force” in
fighting terrorism was made in clear reference to military
intervention. It did not scrap the Constitution and allow the
president to do whatever he pleased in any area in the name of
fighting terrorism.
What is especially perplexing about this story is that the 1978 law
set up a special court to approve eavesdropping in hours, even
minutes, if necessary. In fact, the law allows the government to
eavesdrop on its own, then retroactively justify it to the court,
essentially obtaining a warrant after the fact. Since 1979, the FISA
court has approved tens of thousands of eavesdropping requests and
rejected only four. There was no indication the existing system was
slow—as the president seemed to claim in his press conference—or in
any way required extra-constitutional action.
This will all play out eventually in congressional committees and in
the United States Supreme Court. If the Democrats regain control of
Congress, there may even be articles of impeachment introduced.
Similar abuse of power was part of the impeachment charge brought
against Richard Nixon in 1974.
In the meantime, it is unlikely that Bush will echo President
Kennedy in 1961. After JFK managed to tone down a New York Times
story by Tad Szulc on the Bay of Pigs invasion, he confided to Times
editor Turner Catledge that he wished the paper had printed the
whole story because it might have spared him such a stunning defeat
in Cuba.
This time, the president knew publication would cause him great
embarrassment and trouble for the rest of his presidency. It was for
that reason—and less out of genuine concern about national
security—that George W. Bush tried so hard to kill the New York
Times story.
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
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