Bush in 2004: “a wiretap requires a court order”
Bush in 2004, before the existence of the NSA’s warrantless wiretap program was confirmed:
Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires — a wiretap requires a court order. 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. It’s important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.
This was a lie. The word “lie” is a strong word. Many people use it when they mean “mistaken” or “incorrect.” Let me be clear: when I say that Bush lied here, I mean that he knew that what he was saying was not the truth, and in fact that the opposite was true.
http://pol.moveon.org/dontpardon/
You said it, brother. This one is so obvious and disgusting. The courts have never refused more than a tiny handful of these requests so why do they want to avoid it? Because they are trying to hide their illegal behavior.
As in, “before the President wanted to make Al Queda aware that things were being done differently and secretly in order to foil any future attacks on the United States.”
What’d ya think? He was going to say, “Oh yeah! We’ve got this really neat secret NSA program to really mess up the way they communicate with one another!”?
I’m not happy with the program or that he (using your words) lied to conceal the program’s existence, but I understand it. He should have instead said something like, “I’m not going to discuss ongoing programs.”
Yeah, it was pretty smart of Bush not to inform the terrorists that he was wiretapping them without even bothering to get a warrant. I wonder how many plots were foiled or terrorists were nabbed before the NYT squealed to the bad guys.
I guess we’ll never know, since Bush probably doesn’t want the terrorists to know which of our tactics work best in catching them. Still, it’s nice to know he’s there to look out for us.
FISA is a secret court. Whether or not they notify FISA has no standing on whether or not the terrorists find out about it. Bush told the terrorists he was going to listen in to their communications, in October 2001. It wasn’t a secret. The secret was that the wiretaps were being done without court supervision, in violation of the law.
Nice sarcasm, Kevin.
Look, all I’m saying is when it comes to national security issues, you can’t expect the president (whomever he is) to be totally forthcoming on everything. What if Roosevelt and Churchill had been honest about Calis? In Bush’s mind, the NSA system had been used by Clinton, his AG and members of Congress had told him they had no qualms about the program, so in his mind, he was justified in being misleading. I just argue he shouldn’t have commented on it in the first place.
I’m tired of defending President Bush. I’ll be glad when his term is up. I believe the program is illegal. I’m not arguing any of this, I’m just saying when anyone tells you anything about operational security matters, don’t be disappointed when you later learn they were intentionally misleading you.
Crazy.