1-04-06, 9:22 am
The specter of impeachment is haunting Washington as anger over the Bush administration’s domestic spy program grows.
According to Editor and Publisher magazine recently, a survey of Internet and print media shows that 'impeachment chatter' is on the rise in response to revelations about the administration’s illegal domestic spying.
In fact, a coalition of progressive individuals and organizations called ImpeachPAC is calling on people to pressure Congress to push for impeachment hearings.
In a press statement earlier this week, Bob Fertik, President of ImpeachPAC, noted that 'impeachment is not a 'fringe' position, as the Bush administration would like Americans to believe. With a recent Zogby poll showing Americans support impeachment hearings by a solid majority of 53%-42%, there is far more support for impeachment than there is for the war in Iraq.'
ImpeachPAC's cites misleadership and lying over the justification for the war in Iraq as well revelations about NSA warrantless spying as a reasonable basis for Congress to take up its Constitutional duty to demand accountability through impeachment hearings.
In early 2002, President Bush authorized the National Security Agency (NSA), the largest spy agency in the country, to conduct wiretaps on international and domestic telephone calls without seeking warrants from secret courts created under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), according to an explosive article in the New York Times last month. The Times’ report was based on leaked information from White House and administration insiders.
In matters related to national security, the government ordinarily obtains warrants from secret 'FISA' courts without having to appear in open court in which sensitive information would be made public. The law that created the FISA courts, written in response to the abuse of power by the Nixon White House, also reiterated the Constitutional mandate against warrantless search and seizure.
Ostensibly designed to track terrorist activity, this spy program listened in on the international and domestic telephone calls of thousands of Americans, according to the NSA’s own admissions. Other media reports based on expert analysis indicate that the NSA may have actually used high-tech 'data mining' equipment to illegally spy on millions of telephone users.
Last week, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released a statement calling for an investigation into the administration’s authorization of the NSA spying program.
ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero said, 'President Bush cannot use a claim of seeking to preserve our nation to undermine the rules that serve as our foundation. The Attorney General, who may have been involved with the formulation of this policy, must appoint a special counsel to let justice be served.'
Echoing this sentiment, Jonathan Turley, a professor of Constitutional law at George Washington University and an expert in legal issues related to national security matters, described the President's authorization of warrantless spying as 'illegal and unconstitutional.'
In response to Bush’s order that the Department of Justice conduct an investigation into who leaked the secret spy program to the media (not into the nature of the program itself), Turley described Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ handling of it as 'completely and facially unethical.'
Former Nixon counsel John W. Dean, in an op/ed piece for FindLaw.com, noted that Bush's admission that he had indeed authorized the spy program was an admission to an impeachable offense. Dean drew a parallel between Bush’s illegal authorization and Nixon’s authorization of wiretapping of political opponents and antiwar activists, one of the charges for which Nixon was impeached. President Bush’s claims notwithstanding, illegal wiretapping doesn’t fall within his authority as Commander-in-chief, said Dean. Further, the administration’s refusal to seek congressional approval expresses contempt for the Constitutional separation of powers designed to prevent abuses by any single branch of government.
The administration’s weak defense of its spying program amounts to this: 'we're spying on you for your own good.' And despite the advice of experts who hint that such spying, aside from being illegal, is probably ineffective, the administration continues to claim that its dismantling of the Constitution is the only way to protect us.
The NSA’s spying was controversial enough for former Deputy Attorney General James Comey, a partisan defender of other controversial policies that have eroded civil liberties, who refused to endorse it in 2004 when the White House approached the Department of Justice for its secret approval to extend the program.
At the time, Comey was acting Attorney General for the hospitalized John Ashcroft, and was concerned about the legality of secret warrantless domestic spying, according to media reports. Comey’s hesitancy forced Alberto Gonzales, then White House Counsel, to go to the hospital where Ashcroft was undergoing gall bladder surgery to get Ashcroft’s signature personally. Even Ashcroft’s personal support for warrantless spying has been questioned.
Legal issues have so deeply concerned even some Republican members of Congress, that Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, plans to hold hearings on the matter. Other Republican leaders want to head off the growing controversy by conducting an investigation under the cloak of secrecy.
This contemptible domestic spying program, along with the administration’s other systematic attacks on civil liberties (such as the administration’s promotion of PATRIOT Act search and seizure powers for federal law enforcement agencies without judicial oversight), done in the name of protecting us from terrorism, demands full exposure. We need to know the truth about what the NSA was doing, how it was being done, and who has been affected.
We need clarification that spying on people without showing probable cause in a court that the target is a suspect is un-Constitutional and represents an abuse of power. We also need a Congress that will actually do its job and demand accountability from the administration and take legal measures to punish those who have broken the law, regardless of political party affiliations.
Since we would expect nothing less in the real world, it is time for the wheels of justice to move within the government.
--Joel Wendland is managing editor of Political Affairs and can be reached at jwendland@politicalaffairs.net.
