Gonzalez just messed up big time
Alberto Gonzalez, in yet another attempt to defend illegal warrantless spying on Americans, has further damned himself and the rest of the Bush administration.
One of the most common “Devil’s Advocate” theories making the rounds, as people struggle to grasp why the Bush administration would work so hard to illegally avoid getting warrants from the FISA court first before doing their eaverdropping, speculates as follows:
No warrant naming specific people could be requested, because the eavesdropping program has supposedly been intercepting all or most communication from everyone and then technologically filtering it down to a smaller set of search results based on things like keyword matches.
That’s how the theory goes, anyway. If that were true, while it would be deeply troubling and still an impeachable offense in my own opinion, the plea of wartime necessity would go a long way with the more gullible.
Alberto Gonzalez just shot that excuse out of the water, though.
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said he and other top aides were now educating the American people and Congress. “The president has not authorized … blanket surveillance of communications here in the United States,” he said.
No blanket authorization means they have not been screening everything from everybody, as the Devil’s Advocate theory speculates.
That means they are targeting specific individuals.
That means they could have obtained warrants, but didn’t bother.
The “wartime necessity” argument then collapses. They can’t now fall back on the technological and practical issues surrounding blanket surveillance (and the implausibility of obtaining warrants for the entire US population) and thereby point to “wartime necessity” — because Gonzalez admitted they’re not doing blanket surveillance.
The “wartime necessity” argument would have never convinced me, but it would hold enough weight among Bush loyalists to save the President’s sorry ass. Not anymore, though. It’s just not an option, now, because it has no bearing on whether or not they could have obtained warrants.
George W. Bush could have adhered to the laws requirements to first obtain warrants — but wantonly and illegally chose not to. Impeach his ass.
As I noted before, if they are willing to work so hard (and risk so much) to avoid getting warrants to do their spying within the scope of the current law — then something is rotten. I believe they are likely targeting domestic dissenters.
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