Wednesday, December 21, 2005
Why is Bush "helping terrorists" by disclosing surveillance techniques?
Ever since The New York Times disclosed that the Bush Administration has been eavesdropping without warrants on the communications of American citizens, the Administration and its supporters have been indignantly accusing the Times and its sources of harming national security and "helping" Al Qaeda – as though terrorists didn’t realize that we were trying to eavesdrop on their communications until the Times ran this story.
Since this disclosure, Bush has repeatedly insisted that merely mentioning that we eavesdrop on terrorists is to do harm to national security -- claiming, for instance, in his Saturday speech that "our enemies have learned information they should not have, and the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk." Similarly, in his Monday Press Conference, he said that "discussing this program is helping the enemy" because "the discussion about how we try to find them will enable them to adjust."
At the Press Briefing of Attorney General Gonzalez, an Administration aide -- when asked what possible harm could come from the Times article -- actually argued that the more we mention that we eavesdrop on terrorists, the more we help them: "The more we discuss it, the more we put it in the face of those who would do us harm, the more they will respond to this and protect their communications and make it more difficult for us to defend the nation."
But this same George Bush over the last two years -- as he campaigned for his own re-election and then as he campaigned for the permanent renewal of the Patriot Act – has repeatedly talked about, in detail, how we engage in surveillance against terrorists, how we try to eavesdrop on their communications, and what methods we have created and now use to monitor what they are doing and saying.
In fact, Bush not only repeatedly disclosed over the course of the last two years the fact that we eavesdrop on the telephone calls of suspected terrorists -- the same disclosure which, when made by the Times last week, has supposedly done such grave harm to national security -- but Bush has done so in far greater detail than anything the Times said. Worse, Bush has made similar public disclosures with regard to countless other intelligence and surveillance techniques which we use against terrorists.
Apparently, it’s perfectly acceptable to disclose all sorts of information about our intelligence and surveillance activities when the purpose is to help Bush win re-election or the passage of laws he wants, but it is traitorous and highly dangerous to disclose far less revealing information when the purpose is to expose illegal behavior by his Administration.
Here are but a few examples of George Bush passing on information about how we monitor terrorist suspects and thereby helping Al Qaeda to harm America:
George Bush, telling terrorists about how we use "roving wiretaps" to eavesdrop on their calls -Columbus, Ohio - June 9, 2005:
One tool that has been especially important to law enforcement is called a roving wiretap. Roving wiretaps allow investigators to follow suspects who frequently change their means of communications. These wiretaps must be approved by a judge, and they have been used for years to catch drug dealers and other criminals. Yet, before the Patriot Act, agents investigating terrorists had to get a separate authorization for each phone they wanted to tap. That means terrorists could elude law enforcement by simply purchasing a new cell phone.
The Patriot Act fixed the problem by allowing terrorism investigators to use the same wiretaps that were already being using against drug kingpins and mob bosses.
Much much more
http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2005/12/why-is-bush-helping-terrorists-by.htmlscroll down page
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