Open thread

Gonna try to get to bed soon so I can watch the hearings nice and awake. Read the rest of this post...

Gonzales will say that media reports about Bush's spy program are all wrong. Then why did Cheney just say the media reports caused "enormous damage"?

Gonzles had better have lots of evidence tomorrow that he's telling the truth, and not again perjuring himself, because this flatly contradicts slews of stories based on information from administration officials.

From the Financial Times:

"Contrary to the speculation reflected in some media reporting, the terrorist surveillance programme is not a dragnet that sucks in all conversation and uses computer searches to pick out calls of interest," Mr Gonzales will say in response to questions raised by Arlen Specter, chairman of the Senate judiciary committee. "No communications are intercepted unless first it is determined that one end of the call is outside of the country, and professional intelligence experts have probable cause [that is, 'reasonable grounds to believe'] that a part to the communication is a member or agent of al-Qaeda or an affiliated terrorist organisation."

But that appears to conflict with a detailed report in yesterday's Washington Post, based on anonymous interviews with US intelligence officials. The report said that only some 5,000 Americans had had their conversations recorded or e-mails read since the programme was launched following the September 11 terrorist attacks. However, in order to identify those targets, hundreds of thousands of calls and e-mails are first scanned and subject to computer filtering in order to identify the smaller number deemed suspicious.

Wait a minute, the media got the story totally wrong, but then:

1. Bush came out and, in response, admitted the details of the program publicly. Why would he do that if the media got the story wrong? All he'd have to do is say we're not doing any of that, period. But instead he publicly admitted the real details of a super classified program that he claims by making public serious jeopardizes national security?

2. Even more bizarre, Cheney this week had the following to say about the NYT's reporting on this story:

With Congress preparing to plunge into a hearing focused exclusively on the warrantless wiretapping, Vice President Dick Cheney said exposing the effort has done "enormous damage to our national security." The New York Times revealed the program's existence in December.

"It, obviously, reveals techniques and sources and methods that are important to try to protect," Cheney said. "It gives information to our enemies about how we go about collecting intelligence against them. It also raises questions in the minds of other intelligence services about whether or not they can work with the United States intelligence service, with our CIA, for example, if we can't keep a secret."

But, if the NYT got the story wrong, then its reporting revealed nothing at all. And its erroneous reporting most certainly did not cause "enormous damage to our national security." It can't, if it's wrong. And finally, the NYT's "wrong" stories most certainly did not "give information to our enemies about how we go about collecting intelligence about against them." If anything, they gave the enemy misinformation, if Gonzales is really going to say this tomorrow. Then what was Cheney smoking last week when he said this?

So, did Cheney lie last week in an effort to slam the NYT, or is Gonzales going to lie tomorrow in an effort to deceive the public about Bush's domestic spying program?

3. And finally, we find this out, that all the news reports have supposedly been wrong, 6 weeks later, on a Sunday night, the eve of congressional hearings on the sujbect? None of those GOP Senators and Congressmen who were briefed on the subject could have come forward in the past six weeks and said, uh, the newspaper stories are just wrong? No, suddenly, tonight, we find this out.

I hate football, but even I recognize a Hail Mary when I see it. Read the rest of this post...

Specter's statement that Bush domestic spying broke the law garnering major news coverage

Senate Judiciary Chair Arlen Specter's statement that the Bush domestic spying program broke the law is generating major news coverage on the eve of the hearings. Check out some of the headlines:

CBS News: "Specter Blasts Spy Program Rationale"

NY Times: "Specter Says Surveillance Program Violated the Law"

Associated Press: "Specter Criticizes Rationale for Spying"

That article by AP, which has been picked up on numerous sites including ABC News and MSNBC, has a very clear intro:

Sen. Arlen Specter said Sunday he believes that President Bush violated a 1978 law specifically calling for a secret court to consider and approve such monitoring. The Pennsylvania Republican branded Gonzales' explanations to date as "strained and unrealistic."

The big question is whether Specter stays resolute tomorrow. He usually caves in to the Bush team. But the media coverage is unquestionable: Specter thinks Bush broke the law. Which should put Specter under some unpleasant scrutiny if he tries to weasel out of his repeated statements to the contrary tomorrow. Read the rest of this post...

3rd man whisked out of State of the Union address - they thought he looked like a terror suspect - he was American of India(n) descent

Well, I mean, he was brown after all. Read the rest of this post...

Illegal spying hearings begin at 9:30AM Eastern, tomorrow (Monday)

Glenn Greenwald will be doing the lion's share of the coverage, as he's a lawyer and an expert on these issues. And for you early birds, Glenn will be on C-SPAN's Washington Journal tomorrow morning from 7:45-8:30 a.m EST debating the NSA scandal with University of Virginia Professor Robert Turner.

More from Glenn:

This clip of George Bush should be talked about all week -- why, if the Administration had all the legal authority in the world to eavesdrop without warrants and outside of FISA did it repeatedly make false statements to the public and to the Congress assuring us all that it was eavesdropping only in accordance with FISA? Parties make false statements in order to conceal their behavior only when their behavior is improper and wrong, not when it is justified and legal. And deliberately false statements of that sort from our government officials happen to be unacceptable and wrong, and really constitute a scandal unto itself.

Glenn makes an excellent point. If you're obeying the law, but the info you're being asked about is top secret, then you say "it's top secret" or you can even say "all of our work is within the law." You don't say "oh no, we'd never spy on anyone without a court order." Yet that is what the president said. He lied. And generally, the only reason you outright lie is when you're breaking the law and you know it. Read the rest of this post...

Some questions to consider for tomorrow's "Bush spied on you illegally" Senate hearing

1. Attorney General Gonzales, who will be testifying tomorrow, lied under oath to the US Senate last year about the Bush administration's spying-on-Americans program. Why did he perjure himself then, and why should we trust his testimony now?

2 Can Gonzales and the Bush administration guarantee that their eavesdropping never intentionally or unintentionally captured communications of American political opponents or US journalists?

3. If the Bush administration is so confident that it has the power under the constitution to continue spying on Americans, then will it let the FISA court review its domestic spying program in order to determine if the domestic spying is illegal or unconstitutional? Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

Joe and I were at a gathering of the liberal elite drinking cappuccini and plotting NSA hearing strategy.

We miss anything? Read the rest of this post...

Newsweek: Valerie Plame was still a covert agent when Karl Rove and Scooter Libby outed her

First, duh.

Second, then why does Karl Rove still have a security clearance? We're devoting this entire week to the administration talking about how dangerous intelligence leaks are, and exhibit A is still walking around the most senior levels of the White House.

George Bush can't have it both ways. Attacking the leakers when he harbors an admitted leaker as his most valuable staffer.

Why does George Bush have a pre- September 11 mentality?

More from Firedoglake. Read the rest of this post...

Senator Specter still says he thinks Bush broke the law by spying on Americans

Specter is holding firm. It's possible he feels he gave Bush his Supreme Court nominee and now, in exchange, he gets the right to do the right thing regarding illegal domestic spying. Still, Specter has yet to show some real backbone versus the Bush administration. The hearings are this week, stay tuned. Read the rest of this post...

Wash. Post examines -- and explains why --the Bush domestic spying program is illegal

The article is definitely worth a read. No one from the White House would comment for this piece -- they'll only give speeches and interviews where facts are considered. The Post examines how the spying program works, compared to how the Bush team says it does. And, importantly, the reporters explain why the program is illegal:

The Bush administration refuses to say -- in public or in closed session of Congress -- how many Americans in the past four years have had their conversations recorded or their e-mails read by intelligence analysts without court authority. Two knowledgeable sources placed that number in the thousands; one of them, more specific, said about 5,000.

The program has touched many more Americans than that. Surveillance takes place in several stages, officials said, the earliest by machine. Computer-controlled systems collect and sift basic information about hundreds of thousands of faxes, e-mails and telephone calls into and out of the United States before selecting the ones for scrutiny by human eyes and ears.

Successive stages of filtering grow more intrusive as artificial intelligence systems rank voice and data traffic in order of likeliest interest to human analysts. But intelligence officers, who test the computer judgments by listening initially to brief fragments of conversation, "wash out" most of the leads within days or weeks.

The scale of warrantless surveillance, and the high proportion of bystanders swept in, sheds new light on Bush's circumvention of the courts. National security lawyers, in and out of government, said the washout rate raised fresh doubts about the program's lawfulness under the Fourth Amendment, because a search cannot be judged "reasonable" if it is based on evidence that experience shows to be unreliable. Other officials said the disclosures might shift the terms of public debate, altering perceptions about the balance between privacy lost and security gained.

Read the rest of this post...

Sunday Morning Open Thread

Who is saying what to whom on the talk shows this morning? And, is anyone saying anything interesting? Read the rest of this post...

Expect more lies and more spin from Gonzales this week

Attorney General Gonzales will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week on the Bush administration's domestic spying program. Gonzales played a key role in that program when he was White House legal Counsel. Here's the question: why should the Senators or the American people believe Gonzales now when he has already lied about this program under oath -- before the same committee?:

Mr. Gonzales's credibility is especially suspect among Democrats. Senator Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, a member of the Judiciary Committee, is angry over a response from Mr. Gonzales during his confirmation hearing when Mr. Feingold asked, "Does the president, in your opinion, have the authority, acting as commander in chief, to authorize warrantless searches of Americans' homes and wiretaps of their conversations in violation of the criminal and foreign intelligence surveillance statutes of this country?"

At the time, the spy program was well under way. Mr. Gonzales denied that the administration was engaged in anything illegal and said, "So what we're really discussing is a hypothetical situation."

Mr. Feingold, who voted against Mr. Gonzales's nomination, sent Mr. Gonzales a letter last week, reminding him of the exchange — "misleading testimony," he called it — and telling him to be prepared to explain it on Monday.

In an interview on Friday, Mr. Feingold said, "He hid the fact that the program existed."

So, he wasn't honest when he was testifying to become the nation's chief law enforcement officer. At the time, in January of 2005, Gonzales was well aware that the NY Times had the story of the domestic spying operation. Remember that the Times released the story in December of 2005, but they'd had numerous conversations with the Bush White House beginning in 2004 over this blockbuster news. Even knowing that a major news organization could prove him wrong, Gonzales lied.

How can anyone believe what Gonzales says now? It is standard operating procedure for the Bush team to lie. The traditional media and members of Congress still have a hard time accepting that -- which is why Gonzales, Rove and the rest of them keep doing it. Read the rest of this post...