Liberals Charge Bush Spying Authorization Infringes Terrorists Civil Rights 

The New York Times initiated an insurgent attack on the Bush Administration equivalent to that of a terrorist homicide bomber where instead of strapping a bomb to their chests and detonating it in a crowd of people, they used words and the manipulation of information to generate their own explosion in an attempt to maim and/or destroy.

Using the presidential powers bestowed upon him by Article II of the Constitution and under the auspices of the declaration for war passed by Congress prior to our military intervention of Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq, President Bush authorized the use of electronic international surveillance of possible terrorists without court ordered warrants.

In the new electronic age, where information is as fleeting as a feather in the wind, intelligence officials need to be able to quickly, sometimes in a matter of minutes, access, assess, and distribute collected evidence so that apprehension of terrorists or prevention of terrorist activities can be fully achieved to protect Americans in the post 9-11 world.

Realizing the need to completely utilize this ability to fight terrorist activities, unlike previous administrations, President Bush usurped the FISA court... Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act... and ordered the operations in the immediate aftermath of the 9-11 tragedy.

Besides the fact that he had the power under the U.S. Constitution and congressional support, he also understood the lightning swiftness of modern-day communications and the powerful edge it gives terrorist organizations throughout the world, over law-abiding countries fighting the War on Terror using antiquated criminal procedures.

Since the FISA court was established in 1978, it used mandates that were designed with that era’s mindset to issue court approved warrants to authorize surveillance on individuals who were suspected of organizing terrorist activities against America from inside or outside the country.

Most of the mandates used by the court allowed for the acceptance of intelligence in a manner that was agreeable for the issuance of warrants to spy on suspects more often than not, but those mandates still hold woefully inadequate as a staple for procedure in the modern-day War on Terror.

What purpose does a court hold if intelligence points to a terrorist attack in an hour that is eventually able to be thwarted by government officials, but has to be reviewed after-the-fact by that court which finds that the issuance of a warrant was not obtainable, therefore making the prevention of the terrorist attack unlawful?

The President understood this and took what he was assured was the appropriate action necessary to put America at the forefront and in a proactive position in the War on Terror to best allow our intelligence capabilities to function quickly to ‘connect-the-dots’ of terrorist operations and stop them from coming to fruition and in the process keep Americans safe.

The New York Times, having gleaned knowledge of the President’s decision from an unknown source that in itself should be generating an investigation, was asked by the administration to hold that information back from publication.

Just as the alligator promised to help the gingerbread man cross the river, then upon reaching the other side the alligator proceeded to eat him, the Times waited a year before they breeched our national security and used the information in an attempt to devour President Bush.

Stating that the Bush Administration, ‘secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without court-approved warrants’, the Times wanted to emphasize that this was, ‘a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices’.

And therein lies another example of the bias that most Americans believe exists in the mainstream media and how it reports and disseminates news to the populace. While the Times is busy using the knowledge of their 'leaked national security secrets' to lambaste the President, they completely ignore the basic fact that every president since the creation of the FISA court, has utilized 'presidential powers' to bypass the court in issuing 'warrant less' surveillance in this country.

That includes every liberals' beloved president, Bill Clinton.

An associate attorney general between 1994 and 1997 under President Clinton, John Schmidt was concise in a declaration that the Supreme Court and Congress had both accepted a U.S. President's 'inherent authority' to order 'warrant less' electronic surveillance on suspected terrorist activity that even included American citizens.

"Electronic surveillance of communications to or from those who might plausibly be members of or in contact with Al Qaeda was probably the only means of obtaining information about what its members were planning next," Schmidt wrote in a column published by the Chicago Tribune. "FISA does not anticipate a post-Sept. 11 situation."

In 1993 Clinton even went so far as to order the domestic electronic surveillance of a U.S. citizen; 31-year CIA veteran Aldrich Ames, without a warrant in a case where FBI agents broke into his home and installed eavesdropping devices.

Carrying that 'inherent authority' to the nth degree, a recent Washington Times story reported, "In 1994, President Clinton expanded the use of warrant less searches to entirely domestic situations with no foreign intelligence value whatsoever. In a radio address promoting a crime-fighting bill, Mr. Clinton discussed a new policy to conduct warrant less searches in highly violent public housing projects."

That, folks, is the epitome of ‘a domestic spy operation’ and the decision to destroy American civil liberties through that clandestine operation was ordered by Bill Clinton, not George Bush.

And finally, in 2000 an episode of ‘60 Minutes’ was aired on CBS that reported the Clinton Administration had adopted its own domestic surveillance program called 'Echelon' that was run by the NSA.

The program reported that Clinton was 'spying on Americans' by utilizing Echelon computers that would, "Capture virtually every electronic conversation around the world". It also said they were monitoring, "everything from data transfers to cell phones to portable phones to baby monitors to ATM's."

So while the Times beloved president Clinton was actually spying on Americans who had nothing what-so-ever to do with terrorist activities, they could have cared less.

Yet when President Bush utilized the same 'inherent authority' to spy on suspected international terrorists in an attempt to garner intelligence that may help prevent terrorist activity in the United States, suddenly media elitists and liberals across the country are up-in-arms over the 'possible violation of civil liberties' of terrorists!

What makes the Times story even more blatantly politically motivated, is an opinion written by the FISA court in 2002 where the court admitted, "We take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President's constitutional power."

That would be the ‘constitutional power’ of the President to spy on suspected international terrorists without a FISA court warrant in an attempt to protect the United States from having to endure another tragic terrorist attack like we did on 9-11-2001.

At some point in the post 9-11 world, liberals need to accept the reality that protecting America from terrorist attacks... which specifically means preventing an attack from happening at all... is more important than protecting the liberal assertion that terrorists are somehow granted civil liberties in America by the Constitution.