With each week seemingly taking President George Bush’s political poll numbers to a new low, the latest controversy over the disclosure that the government has secretly collected data on phone call records of millions of Americans comes when Bush is not at his optimum political strength. Or enjoying optimum credibility except among his most steadfast supporters.
Part of the problem is that in his speeches Bush has framed the kinds of surveillance the government was doing as efforts only aimed at those suspected of having contact with terrorists. The problem for the administration — once again — is its penchant for secrecy and statements that later come back to haunt it as being truthful…only if each listener hired a lawyer to parse every word and punctuation mark. That’s what’s behind a comment such as this one:
USA Today reported Thursday that at least three companies – AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth – turned over call records for tens of millions of their customers to the National Security Agency (NSA) as part of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism. Another company, Denver-based Qwest, refused to cooperate because it questioned the legality of the government program.
Critics said the massive collection of phone records violates Americans’ privacy and raises disturbing questions about the government’s reach into personal lives.
“Are you telling me that tens of millions of Americans are involved with al-Qaida?” Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., asked. “If that’s the case, we’ve really failed in any kind of a war on terror.”
In the U.S., newspapers, talk shows and blogs took often predictable positions. And the issue got big play abroad with a perhaps blunter explanation. Times Online:
PRESIDENT BUSH faced new and potentially damaging allegations about the secret surveillance of Americans last night after reports that his Administration has covertly collected domestic phone records of tens of millions of citizens.
The report provoked outrage from Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill.
In a sign of how seriously the White House viewed the potential fallout, Mr Bush appeared on television to read a hastily prepared statement in which he did not deny the allegations, but insisted that his Administration had not broken any laws….
…..Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, told The Times: “There is a very fine line between national security and personal oppression. The public is prepared to accept a degree of intelligence intervention but this may have crossed the line. I think a majority of Americans will be opposed to this.â€?
Usually a President who gets enmeshed in controversy has (a) a safety net of loyal supporters to fall back on (b) a safety net of people not in his party to fall back on (c) a reservoir of sufficient good will and credibility to carry him through the controversy.
Bush at this point has mostly (a) — and in ever-decreasing numbers, according to the latest polls. The New Zealand Herald‘s U.S. correspondent writes:
This would be used to analyze calling patterns in the hunt for terrorist activity.
That the big phone companies co-operate with the NSA has long been an open secret, and it was far from clear last night whether the activities were in any way illegal.
But the timing of the revelation could not be worse for the beleaguered White House.
Only five months ago it faced a separate firestorm after the disclosure that the NSA was conducting warrant-less eavesdropping on calls made within the US that were suspected of being linked to terrorism.
That programme had been led by the then director of the NSA, Air Force General Michael Hayden, who is now Mr Bush’s nominee to head the CIA.
At the very least he will now have to undergo an additional grilling on the phone call records controversy before he is confirmed.
Conceivably, his nomination may now fail.
Yesterday the White House abruptly cancelled a courtesy call that Gen. Hayden was due to pay to a key Senator citing “scheduling difficulties.” The true reason, almost certainly, was to keep the general out of the public until the worst of the storm had abated.
On CNN, Jack Cafferty issued one of the most pointed commentaries ever — suggesting the U.S. was a hair away from a dictatorship. Video HERE.
Whether it’s close to a dictatorship may be debated but it seems clear the United States is now poised for a battle over whether this administration is governing the way the founding fathers envisioned. There is a pattern under the Bush administration:
- There is a conventional wisdom over the way government (the executive branch, rules in Congress or issue in which Congress gets involved) has operated for years.
- The administration (or in the case of Terri Schiavo in Congress the GOP) swiftly, unilaterally changes the rules of the game. Why? Because it has the power to do so in a government in which one party controls virtually the whole game.
- In some cases it denied it would do so or implied strongly it was going to do so.
- After it does something that is actually quite radical in the use of power, many Republicans express unease or outrage.
- They are pressured to change their stance either by top party or government bigwigs or fears that if they don’t support the official line they may lose their own base support at home.
- What was once considered unthinkable or acceptable then becomes the norm as the bulk of GOPers don’t continue to buck their leadership (exception: Harriet Miers and the Dubai ports deal).
- The conventional wisdom is changed, a power balance is changed, the way a branch of government is changed, and/or the power relationships between the branches of government are changed.
It seems to be a virtual transformation of the way the government has been set up — by default.
Already Republicans in Congress are expressing unease. Will they stick to their ideas of government — or go along with the “hey, it’s already been done so there” attitude of the government? Bloomberg:
Disclosure of the National Security Agency program yesterday reverberated across Capitol Hill, where members of Congress introduced legislation, called for investigations and pledged to order executives from the biggest U.S. phone companies to testify about their role in the effort. Air Force General Michael Hayden, the former NSA chief nominated to head the CIA, will get extra scrutiny, Democratic and Republican lawmakers said.
“We are on our way to a major constitutional confrontation on the Fourth Amendment guarantees on unreasonable searches and seizure,” said Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, who sits on the intelligence subcommittee that was briefed on the program. “This is also going to present a growing impediment to the confirmation to General Hayden.”
But will it? Or will Democrats and independents who are uneasy with it and raise questions be painted as people who have a “pre-911 mentality”? Will Republicans who don’t go along with it be called “RINOs” on talk radio shows?
“I did not know about that program so I was surprised by it,” Senator Chuck Hagel, a Nebraska Republican, said yesterday after a closed-door meeting of the intelligence committee. He said he was concerned about the record-collecting and “we are going to get into that during the confirmation hearings for General Hayden.”
And Bush’s past statements are likely to be recycled on TV and in the print media — as they already are. CNET News:
The new revelations could be politically damaging to the Bush administration because the president has repeatedly stressed that the NSA spy program is aimed only at intercepting phone conversations and e-mail messages where one party to the conversation was outside the United States. In January, for instance, Bush assured Americans that “one end of the communication must be outside the United States.”
And will Hayden’s nomination really be at risk? There is a tendency in the heat of the moment for that kind of judgment to be made and for it to be a bit overblown.
However, when Hayden was announced it was clear that even some Republicans were extremely uneasy about someone who headed NSA — and a military man to boot — taking over as CIA chief. This controversy is unlikely to defuse those concerns. USA Today:
“Enough is enough,” Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said in a speech at American University in Washington. “It is long overdue for this Congress to end the days of roll over and rubber stamp and finally assert its power of advise and consent before Gen. Hayden becomes Director Hayden.”
Hayden’s role in the data-collection program “might have an impact” on his nomination to replace Porter Goss, who was forced out last week, said Rep. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican.
After meeting with senators on Capitol Hill, Hayden declined to discuss specifics.
“All I would want to say is that everything the NSA does is lawfully and very carefully done,” he said.
The problem for Hayden and Bush: It’s the “trust me” defense. But how can people trust you if you weren’t candid about it and they found out through leaks — and the program that came out via the leaks was seemingly at odds with public assurances given earlier?
Republicans were already split on the issue. Note the New York Times:
Some Republicans, including Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, defended the N.S.A.’s activities and denounced the disclosure. Mr. Hoekstra said the report “threatens to undermine our nation’s safety.”
“Rather than allow our intelligence professionals to maintain a laser focus on the terrorists, we are once again mired in a debate about what our intelligence community may or may not be doing,” he said….
….The House majority leader, John A. Boehner of Ohio, said he wanted more information on the program because “I am not sure why it would be necessary to keep and have that kind of information.”
But if past controversies are any guide, Boehner is likely to receive information and will then say the program is fine with him.
Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson was blunt:
At least now we know that the Bush administration’s name for spying on Americans without first seeking court approval — the “terrorist surveillance program” — isn’t an exercise in Orwellian doublespeak after all. It’s just a bald-faced lie….
…You’ll recall that when it was revealed last year that the NSA was eavesdropping on phone calls and reading e-mails without first going to court for a warrant, the president said his “terrorist surveillance program” targeted international communications in which at least one party was overseas, and then only when at least one party was suspected of some terrorist involvement. Thus no one but terrorists had anything to worry about.
Not remotely true, it turns out, unless tens of millions of Americans are members of al-Qaeda sleeper cells…There’s an understandable tendency, with this administration, to succumb to a kind of “outrage fatigue.”….. Bush and his people have tried to turn flouting the law into a virtue if it’s a law they find inconvenient. They’ve tried to radically change our concept of privacy. We already knew the NSA was somehow monitoring phone calls, so what’s the big deal?
The big deal is that now we know that the administration — I’ll say “apparently,” although if the report were untrue I think the president would have denied it — is keeping track of the phone calls of millions of citizens who have nothing at all to do with terrorism. Bush has tried to convince us that the overwhelming majority of Americans are not affected by domestic surveillance, but now we know that the opposite is true: The overwhelming majority of us are.
What does this story boil down to? The rights and limits of privacy. Measures needed in a post-911 world. And the consistency to the adherence to norms established way before 911.. norms that no one voted to change and Congress has not given permission to change.
Unless it does so now — by default.
SOME ADDITIONAL COMMENTS:
USA Today:The phone record program serves as a powerful reminder of how, in a digital age, records can be compiled and analyzed in ways you are unaware of.
And combined with a separate NSA program (revealed in December by The New York Times) to eavesdrop without warrants on international calls from the USA, it raises the question of what other secret and constitutionally suspect programs the Bush administration might still be shielding.
Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, who headed the NSA for six years and is now Bush’s nominee to be CIA director, is a master of evasion. Speaking in January about the international eavesdropping, he said the program is not a widely cast “drift net” but is narrowly “focused” and “targeted.”
Perhaps. But, at the time, he was fully aware of a program that is many of the things the other is not. A 2006 version of the Church Committee is needed to investigate the anti-terror programs created in the scary aftermath of 9/11, and the Senate should hold up Hayden’s nomination until all its questions are answered.
Creating a huge, secret database of Americans’ phone records does far more than threaten terrorists. It is a deeply troubling act that undermines U.S. freedoms and threatens us all.
The White House declined to provide an opposing view to this editorial.
Boston Herald: “Since 9/11 the American public has been willing to rely on the assurances of government leaders that they are preserving our privacy while fighting terrorism. Unfortunately, and perhaps understandably, many Americans no longer believe them.”
“>The Chicago Tribune (a paper that is considered to have a Republican editorial page):
We need to know more about this. The government, though, didn’t offer confirmation or elaboration on Thursday. Based on the newspaper’s reporting, this effort appears to go far beyond any surveillance effort that would be targeted at terrorist operations.
At first blush this program carries troubling echoes of Total Information Awareness, a proposed Defense Department “data-mining” expedition into a mass of personal information on individuals’ driver’s licenses, passports, credit card purchases, car rentals, medical prescriptions, banking transactions and more. That was curbed by Congress after a public outcry. It seems the people who wanted to bring you TIA didn’t get the message….
…Yes, we’re flying blind.
Why would the government seek and store records of every telephone call to your doctor, your lawyer, your next door neighbor?
Tell us.
Andrew Sullivan: “Who needs the law when you’re the King? Some of us have long been worried by the Bush administration’s contempt for the rule of law in its legitimate efforts to protect Americans from terrorism. And we’ve been dismissed and criticized for it. But the more you know, the more troubling it gets….This monarch, already eager to perpetuate a dynasty, needs more scrutiny. It may require voting Democrat this fall to give it to him.”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.