Did Bush eavesdrop on Kerry campaign in 2004?

[zulchzulu]

Poll question: Did Bush eavesdrop on Kerry campaign in 2004?

Ed Schultz brought up the idea and I think it certainly is possible. The excuse would be that they were "defending America" by spying on the enemy...

[niyad]

1. I would be surprised if he didn't.

[iconoclastNYC]

3. That should be one of the choices.

[IndianaGreen]

2. NY Times is reporting today widespread surveillance by FBI of YOU!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1997351

Unbelievable, the FBI has outdone what J. Edgar Hoover did! They even snooped on a Catholic group because of their "semi-communistic" ideas. FBI also spied on political websites, such as Greenpeace and others.

The NY Times sat on this story for a full year. It could have reported this before the 2004 Elections!

[zulchzulu]

4. I remember the rumors of a full-blown story like this that never released

It was about a week before Election Day that rumors of a story about the Bush administration was going to be released...and it never did. Hell, there are so many stories of corruption that have been released since then, but this story would have utterly destroyed the Bush campaign if it had been released a day or two before Election Day. No BBVs could have been able to recover and steal what might have been 20-30% win by Kerry...

The truth does eventually ALWAYS get out though...history is going to remind future generations how absolutely corrupt and EVIL Bush was. We just have to make sure justice weighs down hard and fierce.

[kenny blankenship]

5. If he did, he wouldn't be stupid enough to use the NSA for it

and anyway Rove would be the one in contact with the private sector companies offering to inspect Senator Kerry's diary and toilet paper. Bushler himself wouldn't get involved, or even know.

[leftstreet]

6. Why would he need to? Rove had the swifboat thing going...

...and besides, Bush wins elections by election fraud. He could win against Gandhi if he needed to.

If this wiretapping story isn't just smoke and mirrors, at the most I'd guess they were eavesdropping on journalists rather than politicians.

[TankLV]

7. You have to actually ask the question?

I KNOW they did.

I EXPECT them to do it.

I LEARNED that our wimpy dems DID NOTHING!

Paging dicky durbin - dicky durbin you apology is needed NOW!

Paging dicky durbin......

[Old and In the Way]

8. Read this post up at Digby's

me thinks it had more local and partisan uses then we realize......

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_12_18_digbysblog_ar...

Several senior government officials say that when the special operation first began, there were few controls on it and little formal oversight outside the N.S.A. The agency can choose its eavesdropping targets and does not have to seek approval from Justice Department or other Bush administration officials. Some agency officials wanted nothing to do with the program, apparently fearful of participating in an illegal operation, a former senior Bush administration official said. Before the 2004 election, the official said, some N.S.A. personnel worried that the program might come under scrutiny by Congressional or criminal investigators if Senator John Kerry, the Democratic nominee, was elected president.

I wonder who they might have been monitoring in 2004?

More and more, Bush is reminding me of Richard Nixon.....with updated plumber technology.

[AntiCoup2K4]

9. They didn't need to

They had enough DLC'ers fucking up the campaign who reported back to their real bosses at the GOP headquarters.

[nolabels]

10. The consequences of taking........

Probably checking out a lot of other things illegally also, but what else would you expect from a corrupt government run a muck

[xchrom]

11. why wouldn't they?

[KitchenWitch]

12. I want to know who voted for the clean fair campaign!

:grr:

[acmavm]

13. Who in the hell thinks bush** ran a clean campaign? That's proof that

we have either one damn idiot or one damn freeper here.

[zulchzulu]

14. I'm guessing it was the temptation to act like a Repug for a sec

Hopefully the person had nightmares of being trapped in a Bush supporter's body. That would indeed be scary.

[Don1]

15. YES.

Here is why. He spied on a gazillion peace activists. Many (maybe not even most, but many) peace activists supported Kerry and some would have worked on his campaign. So whether by design or coincidence Bush's people were spying on parts of the Kerry campaign. If his people received such campaign strategy information by coincidence (and not by design) what do you think they would do with it?

These intel guys probably do not have the time to analyze and read everything they get. Especially now with the Patriot Act. But I think that odds are very much in favor of the Administration either spying on the Kerry campaign by design or by coincidence. In the coincidence scenario, they might not have realized to this day that they had this campaign info in their databases of paperwork. Or they may have seen it. Who knows.

[erpowers]

16. Would Not Surprise Me

I would not be surprised if it came out that he did spy on the Kerry Campaign. I have begun to think that Bush just spied on his rivals and that is why he did not go to the courts. They courts probably would not have given him the right to spy on his rivals.

[Hyernel]

17. The only thing stopping them would be a sense of honor...

...and integrity. I think we can all follow that to it's obvious conclusion.

[NoPasaran]

18. I sure wouldn't be surprised

I would like to think that Kerry represented at least as much of much of a threat to Bushco as a bunch of vegans.

[FormerDittoHead]

19. Why, it would be a matter of national security!

To end to war on terror and give control over to "Mr. Flip Flop" who would have other countries tell us "global test" if we could defend ourselves?????

It would be our DUTY to eavesdrop on them!

[zulchzulu]

20. Amazed at results.... and what I'd like to see is...

...whether Freepers think that Bush should have tapped Kerry's phones and spied on him because they actually believe the Swiftboat liars.

[karynnj]

22. I would doubt they believed the liars

because they likely assisted them in setting things up. Also, just as Nixon asked the Secretary of the Navy (who was John Warner, now a Senator) to check all Kerry's records to be disappointed that he apparently was a totally clean, very highly praised officer, I assume that Bush did the same. (His father looked at Clinton's records.)

Also, Douglas Brinkley who wrote the Tour of Duty book was a Tulane University Historian. Because he came away so impressed by Kerry - that the book is almost taken as a campaign biography - which it wasn't and Kerry accepted having NO editorial rights. I think it was just the Rove strategy of going straight at a Kerry strength.

[Geek_Girl]

21. It wouldn't surprise me

I hope the ACLU files a FOIA and finds out all they can on who the White House deemed was a terrorist threat and illegally wired tapped their phones. Then I hope those persons bring charges against the White House. I'm not sure how all that would play out but maybe someone with legal experience could start a post with their opinion.