Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

By reading FISA and Supreme Court opinions on the issue of wire-tapping, I am certain that an order to eavesdrop on the communications of American citizens whose calls originated or terminated on American soil, without benefit of a warrant, would be an illegal order. I would have refused to obey such an order. And, given the serious nature of such an ongoing violation of the Constitution, I would have used the chain of command to protest it. During my career I refused one order that I felt was unlawful, risking court martial. I was quickly proven to have been right in that decision and the officer involved apologized. I'm grateful to learn according to some reports, some in the NSA similarly refused the order to wire-tap Americans without a warrant. They risked their careers by doing so. Yet despite refusals by some in the NSA, and protests from some leaders in Congress, the wire-tapping continued. Going to the New York Times must have seemed like the only option for defending our freedom to the person or people who exposed this activity. That took guts.

Similarly, it took courage for a soldier to get a CD of photos of the abuses at Abu Ghraib to the press. It took faith in what was right for someone to expose the extraordinary rendition program, shuttling prisoners to far-off lands and hiding them from the International Red Cross. Frustration with White House lies drove Ambassador Joe Wilson to expose the bogus Niger uranium story. Similar courage and faith helped Daniel Ellsberg expose the Pentagon Papers. And we now know even more clearly that the government fabricated the entire case for going to war in Vietnam, much as our current administration seems to have hyped the threat from Iraq.

Chain of Command

Despite the need to sometimes risk your neck when it fails to work, I still believe in the chain-of-command. Now that I am a civilian, I put that faith in the balance of powers established by our constitution. That balance however, can only be maintained when each branch of government vigorously asserts and defends its power.

The President has certainly grabbed as much power as he could muster, perhaps honestly believing that he is doing what he must to protect Americans. I believe he is completely misguided and that his advisors are grievously wrong, but he is zealously defending his power from the bully pulpit as is his right. The Supreme Court has rebuked him several times, causing him to change course. Congress however has been horribly negligent in checking his power and asserting their own.

The idea of Senator Roberts giving President Bush a pass on breaking the law - short-circuiting the investigation into this NSA warantless wire-tapping program, is bad enough. Adding insult to injury by punishing the whistle-blowers (leakers) moves us ever closer to an executive branch that fears nothing. Congress is feckless, the courts never get to hear about abuses, and anyone who loses it and finally leaks things to the press goes to jail.

What To Do Now?
What can the Democrats do? They shouldn't let the investigation into the NSA wire-tapping die. They should make one simple demand. The NSA must release a list of every single phone call and email they've intercepted under this program. To whom and from whom, all in a nice little spreadsheet. No other details about the program are necessary - just the list. One senior Democrat and one senior Republican on the intelligence committee gets to sit in a vault and read over the list.

I suspect the real news, the real secret the White House is trying to keep, is that at least some of those wire-taps were on the communications of administration enemies, not just people clearly linked to Al Quaeda.

Some already believe that the President's actions constitute an impeachable offense. Refusal to show the wire-tap records to Congress would certainly seal such an indictment, much as Richard Nixon's attempts to cover up misdeeds sealed his fate.

Warning to the NSA...... 2-minute gaps will not be tolerated!