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F.I.S.A.?

Posted on Saturday 10 March 2007

When I look back at my own posts about the Bush Administration’s ignoring the F.I.S.A. Courts, I find references to Bush, Rove, Cheney, Gonzales explaining to us how the important it is to ignore the courts. There are assurances that the Patriot Act, the N.S.A. Surveillance, won’t be abused. Here’s Karl Rove in his January 2006 RNC speech:
National Security: Iraq is making great strides towards Democracy. We’re winning the Iraq War and in the War on Terror. Pulling out of Iraq now would be abandoning the Iraqis, handing them over to the Terrorists, and strengthen the Terrorist Movement. We need to renew the Patriot Act and embrace the necessity of unwarranted domestic surveillance.
Now, we hear about the F.B.I.’s behavior in the absence of F.I.S.A. oversight. What we need to embrace, Karl, is that your Bush Administration’s rhetoric is unrelated to reality…

Another is the Patriot Act. The Patriot Act tore down the wall that prohibited law enforcement and intelligence authorities from sharing information about terrorist threats. And the Patriot Act allowed federal investigators to pursue terrorists with tools they already used against other criminals. If a tool is good enough to use to track down drug dealers, or organized crime, or Medicare fraud, then it is good enough to bring terrorists to justice.

In 2001 Congress passed this law with a large, bipartisan majority – including a vote of 98-1 in the Senate. The Patriot Act has protected the United States from attack and saved American lives – and yet the Democrat leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, recently boasted that Democrats had "killed the Patriot Act."

Republicans want to renew the Patriot Act – and Democrat leaders take special delight in trying to kill it. This is an issue worthy of a public debate.
Karl Rove January 2006 

and now…

The audit by the department’s inspector general, Glenn A. Fine, detailed widespread abuse of the FBI’s authority to seize personal details about tens of thousands of people without court oversight through the use of national security letters.

It also found that the FBI had hatched an agreement with telephone companies allowing the agency to ask for information on more than 3,000 phone numbers — often without a subpoena, without an emergency or even without an investigative case. In 2006, the FBI then issued blanket letters authorizing many of the requests retroactively, according to agency officials and congressional aides briefed on the effort.

The disclosures prompted a public apology from FBI Director Robert S. Mueller and promises of reform from Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, who was the focus of a new tide of criticism from Democrats and Republicans already angry about his handling of the firing of eight U.S. attorneys.

"I am the person responsible," Mueller said in a hastily scheduled news conference yesterday. "I am the person accountable, and I am committed to ensuring that we correct these deficiencies and live up to these responsibilities."

Bush, at his news conference in Uruguay today, praised the inspector general for "good and necessary work" and added he was pleased that Mueller moved quickly to respond.

"He took responsibility as he should have," Bush said. "I’ve got confidence in Director Mueller, as I do in the attorney general."

I don’t know what "I’ve got confidence in Director Mueller, as I do in the attorney general" actually means. But I do know what, "He took responsibility as he should have" means. It means the same thing as George Tenet taking responsibility for the "sixteen words" in the 2003 SOTUS and "Good job, Brownie" in New Orleans. It all means "It’s not my fault."

 

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