8.10.2005
Big Brother and the Bureaucrats (NYTimes.com)
By PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE
Published: August 10, 2005
PRESIDENT Bush's use of a recess appointment to install John Bolton as America's representative at the United Nations may have ended an ugly confirmation battle, but it unfortunately left unresolved a significant mystery that had fueled Democratic questions about Mr. Bolton throughout the summer.
In April, Mr. Bolton told Congress that when he was an under secretary at the State Department, he repeatedly circumvented the privacy protections that govern federal eavesdropping on American citizens without a warrant. In Mr. Bolton's defense, it emerged that his actions were in keeping with a widespread - though unacknowledged - practice in Washington.
This was fairly shocking news even to those with long experience overseeing or reporting on our security agencies, and it flies in the face of three decades of assurances by the government that it does not spy on its own citizens. Congress cannot let the controversy be rendered moot by Mr. Bolton's recess appointment. It should begin a broader investigation immediately.
Ever since the Congressional hearings of the 1970's, led by Senator Frank Church of Idaho, revealed that the National Security Agency had spied on Jane Fonda, Dr. Benjamin Spock and thousands of other antiwar protesters, the agency has been at pains to assure the public it does not use its formidable eavesdropping apparatus to listen in on American citizens. According to the standard narrative, the history of American intelligence cleaves neatly into two acts: the free-for-all years that preceded the Church Committee, and the responsible years that have followed.
But even as enshrined in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, the prohibition on domestic spying without a warrant has always been something of a legal fiction: the standard practice is to go ahead and eavesdrop on the conversations of foreigners, even if the party on the other end of the line is an American citizen. Summaries of these conversations are then routinely distributed throughout the relevant government agencies. The privacy of the American citizens involved is putatively preserved by replacing their names with the phrase "U.S. person" in the summary.
...
Heads of the N.S.A. are famous for saying very little about what the agency does, but the one thing that its various directors, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, have said repeatedly is that they do not eavesdrop on American citizens.
We now know that this hasn't been the case - the agency has been listening to Americans' phone calls, just not reporting any names. And Mr. Bolton's experience makes clear that keeping those names confidential was a formality that high-ranking officials could overcome by picking up the phone.
(More ... Big Brother and the Bureaucrats - New York Times) ¶ 17:16
Published: August 10, 2005
PRESIDENT Bush's use of a recess appointment to install John Bolton as America's representative at the United Nations may have ended an ugly confirmation battle, but it unfortunately left unresolved a significant mystery that had fueled Democratic questions about Mr. Bolton throughout the summer.
In April, Mr. Bolton told Congress that when he was an under secretary at the State Department, he repeatedly circumvented the privacy protections that govern federal eavesdropping on American citizens without a warrant. In Mr. Bolton's defense, it emerged that his actions were in keeping with a widespread - though unacknowledged - practice in Washington.
This was fairly shocking news even to those with long experience overseeing or reporting on our security agencies, and it flies in the face of three decades of assurances by the government that it does not spy on its own citizens. Congress cannot let the controversy be rendered moot by Mr. Bolton's recess appointment. It should begin a broader investigation immediately.
Ever since the Congressional hearings of the 1970's, led by Senator Frank Church of Idaho, revealed that the National Security Agency had spied on Jane Fonda, Dr. Benjamin Spock and thousands of other antiwar protesters, the agency has been at pains to assure the public it does not use its formidable eavesdropping apparatus to listen in on American citizens. According to the standard narrative, the history of American intelligence cleaves neatly into two acts: the free-for-all years that preceded the Church Committee, and the responsible years that have followed.
But even as enshrined in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, the prohibition on domestic spying without a warrant has always been something of a legal fiction: the standard practice is to go ahead and eavesdrop on the conversations of foreigners, even if the party on the other end of the line is an American citizen. Summaries of these conversations are then routinely distributed throughout the relevant government agencies. The privacy of the American citizens involved is putatively preserved by replacing their names with the phrase "U.S. person" in the summary.
...
Heads of the N.S.A. are famous for saying very little about what the agency does, but the one thing that its various directors, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, have said repeatedly is that they do not eavesdrop on American citizens.
We now know that this hasn't been the case - the agency has been listening to Americans' phone calls, just not reporting any names. And Mr. Bolton's experience makes clear that keeping those names confidential was a formality that high-ranking officials could overcome by picking up the phone.
(More ... Big Brother and the Bureaucrats - New York Times) ¶ 17:16
