Monday, February 6, 2006
Alberto Gonzales, who will be testifying before Congress today, writes about the NSA surveillance program in OpinionJournal:
America Expects Surveillance - Monitoring the enemy is necessary and appropriate
It is, therefore, inconceivable that the AUMF does not also support the president's efforts to intercept the communications of our enemies. Any future al Qaeda attacks on the homeland are likely to be carried out, like Sept. 11, by operatives hiding among us. The NSA terrorist surveillance program is a military operation designed to detect them quickly. Efforts to identify the terrorists and their plans expeditiously while ensuring faithful adherence to the Constitution and our existing laws is precisely what America expects from the president.
History is clear that signals intelligence is, to use the language of the Supreme Court, "a fundamental incident of waging war." President Wilson authorized the military to intercept all telegraph, telephone and cable communications into and out of the U.S. during World War I. The day after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt authorized the interception of all communications traffic into and out of the U.S. These sweeping measures were seen as necessary and lawful during critical moments of past armed conflicts. So, too, are the more focused intercepts of al Qaeda during our current armed conflict, especially given the nature of the enemy we face...
The Democrats have made the wiretap issue central to their rhetoric of late, in my view once again showing a tone-deafness to the concerns of average Americans. On the other hand, perhaps they don't care whether they're out of tune or not, and are, for some reason or other, continuing to simply pursue a niche political strategy that will assure them nothing more than minority status, sitting history out until the tides turn and some issue or other shows itself and they can ride that into the majority.
It's not just the questioning of the activity, it's the way it's been done -- the overwrought manner in which the issue has been approached that's the problem. Questioning? OK. Impeachment? Give me a break. Clearly the administration, rightly or wrongly, has arguments of common-sense, precedent and legality on its side. If they turn out to be wrong, so be it, but policy differences and matters of honest interpretation ought not an impeachment make. That should be reserved for intentional and knowing wrongdoing alone. The President in this case isn't helping out friends or sticking money in his pocket -- he's trying to defend the American people. This is not a sinister plot to strip Americans of their Constitutional Rights. The Democratic approach could do them credit and reflect that reality, but it doesn't.
Given their behavior on this issue and the proud politicing of the Patriot Act, one could be forgiving for thinking back on the days after 9/11 and be amused at Democratic Party posturing that tried to blame the Administration for not doing everything possible to protect the American People. They simply are not a serious group of people.
Update: Also see Debra Burlingame in today's NY Post (via PJM, who's running a special blog on the subject, and Power Line):
Gen. Hayden and those familiar with the FISA process contend that it is simply too slow for the "hot pursuit" of terrorist communications.
Since even the most "outraged" members of Congress haven't actually called for the president to stop the eavesdropping program, one suspects that it is every bit as vital and effective as Gen. Hayden says it is. Those crying foul in the wake of the program's disclosure haven't offered a workable alternative, other than including more people on the briefing list or rewriting the law itself — which means fully disclosing a highly-classified program to 535 members of Congress and their staffs. Is there anyone in America who believes that 1,000 people on Capitol Hill can keep these operational details quiet?...
