Reference.



FISA Court Approved Bush Spy Program.

quote:

Contrary to claims by Democrats currently hyperventilating on Capitol Hill over President Bush's decision to use the National Security Agency to monitor communications among terrorists, Bush's so-called "illegal" spy program has indeed undergone judicial review.

And a special foreign intelligence surveillance appeals court set up to review the case confirmed that such "warrantless searches" were completely legal.

In the case cited, U.S. v. Truong Dinh Hung, the court upheld surveillance of a foreign agent without probable cause for the purpose of intelligence gathering. Isn't the concern over 4th Amendment rights of American citizens, and perhaps in the criminal law arena?

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=9169

At this point I wonder who leaked??? And what will become of their fate if their identity is revealed...

Certainly makes the Valerie Pflame situation irrelevant by comparison.

It's kind of cute how 'eavesdropping' can get a sweet little name like 'monitoring communications'. Get real!!

If nothing was done wrong, why worry about a leak?

The Opinion Journal article which Newsmax quotes from says:

'In the war on terror, the communications between terrorists in Frankfurt and agents in Florida are harder to track, and when we gather a lead the response often has to be immediate. As we learned on 9/11, acting with dispatch can be a matter of life and death. The information gathered in these wiretaps is not for criminal prosecution but solely to detect and deter future attacks. This is precisely the kind of contingency for which Presidential power and responsibility is designed.'

This is nonsense; the FISA process would not have taken up time - authorisation can even be sought retroactively.

As Coldfuse says, the US v Truong case was about foreign intelligence - 'In 1980, the 4th Circuit court stated in the landmark case of US v. Truong Dinh Hung that "the executive should be excused from securing a warrant only when the surveillance is conducted 'primarily' for foreign intelligence reasons."' www.counterpunch.org. As Newsmax says, "a special foreign intelligence surveillance appeals court"; it wasn't about spying on US citizens. The worry now seems to be that Bush has given the power to the presidential office to spy on anyone the President chooses - Bush authorised eavesdropping on 'likely thousands of people in the US'. news.yahoo.com

The idea that wiretaps could be authorised by the President without judicial oversight has been most strongly contradicted by... George W. Bush:

'In 2004 and 2005, Bush repeatedly argued that the controversial Patriot Act package of anti-terrorism laws safeguards civil liberties because US authorities still need a warrant to tap telephones in the United States.

"Any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order," he said on April 20, 2004 in Buffalo, New York.

"Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so," he added.

On April 19, 2004, Bush said the Patriot Act enabled law-enforcement officials to use "roving wiretaps," which are not fixed to a particular telephone, against terrorism, as they had been against organized crime.

"You see, what that meant is if you got a wiretap by court order -- and by the way, everything you hear about requires court order, requires there to be permission from a FISA court, for example," he said in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

"A couple of things that are very important for you to understand about the Patriot Act. First of all, any action that takes place by law enforcement requires a court order," he said July 14, 2004 in Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin.

"In other words, the government can't move on wiretaps or roving wiretaps without getting a court order," he said. "What the Patriot Act said is let's give our law enforcement the tools necessary, without abridging the Constitution of the United States, the tools necessary to defend America."

The president has also repeatedly said that the need to seek such warrants means "the judicial branch has a strong oversight role."

"Officers must meet strict standards to use any of these tools. And these standards are fully consistent with the Constitution of the United States," he added in remarks at the Ohio State Highway Patrol Academy.

He made similar comments in Baltimore, Maryland, on July 20 2005.

Vice President Dick Cheney offered similar reassurances at a Patriot Act event in June 2004, saying that "all of the investigative tools" under the law "require the approval of a judge before they can be carried out."

"And similar statutes have been on the book for years, and tested in the courts, and found to be constitutional," he said in Kansas City, Missouri.' (yahoo)