Ex CIA counsel (Clinton administration) to testify: Bush violated law

[ProSense]

Ex-CIA Lawyer: No Legal Basis for NSA Spying
Clinton Administration Official to Testify Before Congress

By JESSICA YELLIN
Jan. 11, 2006 — - Former CIA General Counsel Jeffrey Smith will testify in House hearings that there is no legal basis for President Bush's controversial National Security Agency domestic surveillance program, ABC News has learned.

ABC News has obtained a copy of a 14-page memo Smith wrote to the House Select Committee on Intelligence in which he argues that the wiretaps are illegal.

snip...

In his memo, however, Smith argues "it is not credible that the 2001 authorization to use force provides authority for the president to ignore the requirements of FISA."

He said that if the president's arguments for the wiretaps are sustained "it would be a dramatic expansion of presidential authority affecting the rights of our fellow citizens that undermines the checks and balances of our system, which lie at the very heart of the Constitution."

more...

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=1496143&CMP=OTC-RSSFeeds0312

Smith will testify before the House Judiciary Committee on Jan. 20, according to the article.


Debunking the other presidents did it argument:

PRESIDENTS AT WAR
In the midst of conflict, George W. Bush is not the first to stretch the powers of the executive.

By Mark Silva
Washington Bureau
Published January 12, 2006


WASHINGTON -- In the name of a war against terrorism, the Bush administration has restricted the rights of Americans captured on battlefields abroad and arrested inside the United States, and has secretly eavesdropped on people inside the U.S. suspected of communicating with terrorists overseas.

snip...

Geoffrey Stone, law professor at the University of Chicago, was among the letter's signers.

"To declare the entire United States as the equivalent of a battlefield is beyond the power of the president," Stone said in an interview. "When you are dealing with citizens of the United States, they do have rights that are different from enemy combatants on a foreign battlefield."

What history suggests

History is replete with presidential acts in wartime that often, in hindsight, are viewed as mistakes. Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War is one. Years after Roosevelt's internment of Japanese-Americans, the nation apologized and paid reparations. Truman's bid to seize the steel mills was blocked.

Yet, Stone notes, "At least when President Lincoln suspended habeas corpus, he did it openly. At least when President Roosevelt detained Japanese-Americans, he did it openly. we didn't even know this was going on."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0601120210jan12,1,3433092.story?page=2

[hippiechick]

1. Well, he's a Clinton staffer ... of course he's going to LIE

... and smear der upstanding and beloved Fuhrer !!

:sarcasm:

[ProSense]

2. I think Jan 20. is also the day Alito reaches the full Senate. n/t