It doesn’t seem like many Americans really understand the Constitution. We now know that the US district court Judge Anna Taylor apparently does not. Especially with her ‘judgment’ that the Domestic Surveillance Program is not constitutional. Do citizens still allow politics into the subject of American safety?
One thing that the Bush Administration can claim success IS national security. Because of electronic surveillance capability, the administration has thwarted numerous terrorist plots. Terrorist networks and smaller terrorist cells have been decimated. Even staunch Democrats would not be stupid enough to say terrorists were not right here in America, and dream of killing as many Americans as possible. Sure, the Administration is responsible for no additional attack in the US since 9/11, but it does not mean that the threat has disappeared by any means.
Among the terrorists plots thwarted since 9/11 include, 1)West Coast Airliner Plot, 2)East Coast Airliner Plot, 3)Jose Padilla Plot, 4)the 2004 UK Urban Targets Plot, 5)the 2003 Karachi Plot, 6)Heathrow Airport Plot, 7)the 2004 UK Plot, and 8)the 2002 Arabian Gulf Shipping Plot. These plots do not include seven men who recently planned to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago. Even though all seven operated out of Miami’s Liberty City section, they all took an oath to al-Qaeda and planned an “Islamic Army” intent on violence in the US.
They did not include the plot by Khalid Mohammed to have shoe bombs breach a cockpit door, and fly into the tallest building on the West Coast(Library Tower/ LA). It did not include information on Iyman Farris who planned to blow up a New York bridge. And it does not even include details available about Jose Padilla and the ‘dirty bomb’ case. Even a liberal mouthpiece such as ABC News mentions 10 foiled al-Qaeda plots that the US and its partners have disrupted since 9/11.
You keep hearing that the president has broken the law, that he is illegally wiretapping our phone calls, the president should be impeached, and that the Fourth Amendment prohibits any wiretapping. But it seems to be forgotten that former President Jimmy Carter, with the consent of a Democrat-controlled Congress, signed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act(FISA/1978), which reads: “Surveillance Act of 1978(50 USC 1802(a)), the attorney general is authorized to approve electronic surveillance to acquire foreign intelligence information without a court order”. But the Fourth Amendment prohibits unreasonable searches. We are at war with terrorists. Anyone who does not think a terrorist’s actions inside the US is not unreasonable, please let us know.
We also know that the president has the authority under Article II of the Constitution to defend the United States. It’s interesting to note that every administration has claimed this warrantless surveillance power, and no court has ever denied it. In 1980, the FISA court of review held that the president did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information. The court also noted that the executive “not only has superior expertise in the area of foreign intelligence, it is also constitutionally designated as the pre-eminent authority on foreign affairs.”
As Warner Houston observed, “In 2003 alone our citizenry was on the phone on international calls alone for 200 billion minutes.” As we know, our use of cell phones has at least quadrupled since 2003, making surveillance of each call impossible. The agency’s conduct has been thoroughly reviewed, and even the ACLU had no accusations of phone call ‘content’ being observed, recorded, or otherwise compromised. This technique has been used for years by advertisers, ‘e-tailers’, search engines, and content providers. Bottom line—the government collects phone numbers for harvesting and trend analysis. Per Tony Snow(press secretary): “It only targets international phone calls into/out of the US where one of the parties…is a suspected al-Qaeda or affiliated terrorist.” When you think about it, the government should be doing more of this—much, much more.
Frankly, another terrorist attack in the US would have these same complainers screaming that we could have ‘connected the dots’ and stopped this hideous plot. The dots ARE being connected now. America IS being protected. The courts, congressional approval, and legal advice have confirmed that this action IS well within the law. Dissenters have repeated Ben Franklin’s words about “those that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety”. I guess my response would be that, I didn’t know that a computer indicating a number of calls to al-Qaeda was an elimination of essential liberty, that death from terrorists is not ‘temporary’, and that Ben Franklin never met al-Qaeda before.
Kevin Roeten can be contacted at roetenks@charter.net or kevin@kevinroeten.us.