In his unapologetic acknowledgement that he authorized wiretaps on US citizens after Sept. 11, President Bush seems to have broken the law. Speaking simply and basically, what was done was illegal, a clear violation of the law.
The New York Times report saying that Bush gave the National Security Agency license to eavesdrop on Americans communicating with people overseas is bound to give the administration judicial, moral and political headaches. The president evidently did not specify what kind of legal right he had to conduct what was a highly classified spying program. Such self-awarded powers are accepted as normal operating governmental behavior in many countries but they are, in theory at least, anathema to the workings of a democracy such as the United States alleges itself to be.
Bush’s authorization, for example, bypasses a special court set up by the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act; the act authorizes eavesdropping on suspected terrorists. Bush’s authorization also goes beyond the Patriot Act, the domestic anti-terrorism law enacted after the attacks of Sept. 11. There has apparently been so much bending of laws that America’s constitutional liberties are under threat. If Bush has indeed been making things up as he goes along, then he is acting, as one Democratic senator has suggested, as if he were King George. For now, though, Bush is not backing down, contending that what has been done has helped detect and prevent possible terrorist attacks in the US and abroad, that he authorized action be taken on several occasions since Sept. 11 and that he plans on doing so again.
The president also had harsh words for the New York Times leak that had made the snooping public. “Revealing classified information is illegal. It alerts our enemies,” he said. The irony should not be lost. Since 2002, Bush has been allowing the NSA to track the international telephone calls and e-mails of hundreds of people with no referral whatsoever to any courts. This is nothing less than an explicit admission that American democracy has been seriously compromised. Despite all this, Bush has problems with a newspaper that, in keeping with the democratic values of the country, has an inherent right to reveal such information. That the information could in the end implicate Bush as being above the law is part of the democratic price tag.
News of the program comes at a particularly damaging and delicate time. Already, the administration was under fire for allegedly operating secret prisons in Eastern Europe and transporting suspected terrorists to other countries for harsh interrogations. Bush’s admission raises questions about so-called wartime morality and the fundamental values of American society. It challenges the traditional assumptions of the US legal system and just how US laws should be applied. As the torture debate showed, Washington has thought long and hard about how to escape legal restrictions by moving activities offshore. This latest revelation, which smacks of Big Brother, indicates even more of what has been going on out of court and supposedly beyond public scrutiny.
