Vice President Dick Cheney says that if the US had had surveillance capability before Sept. 11, 2001, perhaps there wouldn't have been terrorist attacks that day.
It's a false claim.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act requires a warrant or court order to conduct electronic surveillance. And from 1979 to 2002, the FISA court did not reject a single warrant, issuing 15,264.
President Bush's secret, warrantless domestic-surveillance program, which during his Saturday radio address he admitted to personally authorizing, did not give the National Security Agency any new capability. It just circumvented the rules, which say the NSA must obtain a warrant before proceeding.
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But that doesn't stop Cheney from spinning things.
"And, in fact, it is a program that is, by every effort we've been able to make, consistent with the statutes and with the law. It's the kind of capability [that], if we'd had before 9/11, might have led us to be able to prevent 9/11," he said to ABC's Terry Moran, for a Nightline broadcast to air tonight.
Moran twice asks Cheney whether the administration needs permission from a court to "eavesdrop on communications in America."
Cheney sidesteps in his answer, in an effort to justify the Bush Administration's sidestepping of FISA rules. He twice indicates the Bush program has been reviewed by the Justice Department. He make a vague reference to the program being consistent with the USA Patriot Act. He offers that it has been "signed up to by the attorney general of the US."
And that the administration has "briefed Congress on it — just a few members, the leadership — on over a dozen occasions." In other words, the Republican leadership was in the know, and the rest of us were in the dark.
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So why mislead?
Perhaps Cheney is spinning because he wants to give the conservative noise machine another reason not to blame the Bush Administration for 9/11. The 9/11 Commission placed blame on both the Bush and Clinton administrations, but that's not good enough for most conservatives — they just want to blame Clinton.
A couple of weeks ago, conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham asked listeners what Clinton did to fight terrorism. "Nothing," she answered rhetorically, then corrected herself to say that Clinton did "bomb an aspirin factory." Then she made a reference to Monica Lewinsky, and laughed.
While that sort of ignorance fuels conservative talk radio, no doubt Cheney's interview tonight will only provide the Ingrahams of the world with more ammunition.
***
This item first appeared at Journalists Against Bush's B.S.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - witheld
This was absolutely the worst post i've read on this site yet. biased...uninformative...bravo!
2 - david r. mark
You have any reason to make that statement.
3 - Nancy
Are we surprised? Cheney has repeatedly shown himself to be, possibly aside from Karl Rove, one of the most egregious & ruthless, conscienceless liars & manipulators in the history of US politics.
4 - Matthew T. Sussman
I expected a more factual argument from a David Mark piece. Sorry.
5 - david r. mark
I'm not sure what you are looking for, Matthew. I have a link to the FISA rules. I have included data.
And then I have the Cheney spin, which argues against the FISA law.
What would you like to see?
6 - gonzo marx
ok..how could folks miss all the Funny on this one?
as David points out, the only change in the Law is that after Bush signed the executive order, a court issued warrant was no longer needed
now, he and Cheney claim that "Justice Department Review" was enough...
that's where i start giggling like a school girl...do they mean their buddy Ashcroft?...a Bush appointee...or howabout Alberto Gonzalez...our current AG, whose previous job was WH attorney and who wrote the guidelines about torture and how to circumvent the letter of the Law in detainee matters
awesome stuff from the Administration that campaigned in 2000 to do "not just what's legal, but what is morally right"
seems like they whiffed the "hardball" on both of those
mebbe it's just me that finds this so sick that it's Funny
your mileage may vary
Excelsior!
7 - Dave Nalle
A couple of weeks ago, conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham asked listeners what Clinton did to fight terrorism.
David, perhaps you could provide a different answer to this besides her choice of 'nothing', because looking at history I can't come up with a different answer either. And remote bombings and firing cruise missles doesn't do a thing to fight terrorism.
Dave
8 - MDE
re: "remote bombings and firing cruise missles doesn't do a thing to fight terrorism."
Not only does it not fight terrorism, it is terrorism...might kill a few terrorists though along with the collateral damage.
9 - david r. mark
Before I answer what the Clinton administration did, consider this:
The Bush Administration released the government's annual report on terrorism, but unlike previous Administrations, it decided to specifically omit an "extensive mention of alleged terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden. A senior State Department official told CNN the U.S. government made a mistake in focusing so much energy on bin Laden." [Source: CNN, 4/30/01]
10 - david r. mark
... Just wanted to set the stage ...
11 - david r. mark
What Clinton did (Part 1 of 2):
-- Four followers of the Egyptian cleric Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman were convicted of the World Trade Center bombing in March 1994, and sentenced to 240 years in prison each. The purported mastermind of the plot, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, was captured in 1995, convicted of the bombing in November 1997, and also sentenced to 240 years in prison.
-- In August, 1998, car bombs exploded outside the United States embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing 224 people and wounding about 5,000 others. Four participants with ties to Osama bin Laden were captured, convicted in U.S. federal court, and sentenced to life in prison without parole in October 2001.
-- In August 1998, President Clinton ordered missile strikes against targets in Afghanistan in an effort to hit Osama bin Laden, who had been linked to the embassy bombings in Africa (and was later connected to the attack on the USS Cole). The missiles reportedly missed bin Laden by a few hours, and Clinton was widely criticized by many who claimed he had ordered the strikes primarily to draw attention away from the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
As John F. Harris wrote in The Washington Post:
In August 1998, when [Clinton] ordered missile strikes in an effort to kill Osama bin Laden, there was widespread speculation â€" from such people as Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) â€" that he was acting precipitously to draw attention away from the Monica S. Lewinsky scandal, then at full boil. Some said he was mistaken for personalizing the terrorism struggle so much around bin Laden. And when he ordered the closing of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House after domestic terrorism in Oklahoma City, some Republicans accused him of hysteria.
12 - david r. mark
What Clinton did (Part 2 of 2):
-- In terms of legislation, I would refer you to this link as well as this link, and
13 - david r. mark
this link, and also this link.
Now, I'm not going to suggest that Clinton was fantastic at fighting terrorism. Clearly, he didn't capture Osama Bin Laden, or dismantle Al Qaeda.
But I would suggst that Clinton did more than "nothing." That claim is just empty conservative spin.
14 - david r. mark
BC wouldn't allow me to put so many links in one response. Sorry for having to provide multiple comments.
15 - Matthew T. Sussman
The post is factual, don't get me wrong, but the argument -- if I read this correctly -- is "they shouldn't do this" which is as factual as the Teeniebots claiming they love B5.
The second graf -- "It's a false claim" -- butts heads with Cheney's claim that this act would have prevented 9/11. I do have a problem with Cheney saying that, because there's no way of knowing what could have prevented 9/11. If they approved this spying, maybe it's leaked by a newspaper, 9/11 terrorists refine their plan, and boom. Towers still fall over.
So there's no need to try and refute a claim that itself can't be proven.
I also got confused in the third graf, where it said that every warrant made it through the court. Maybe the rule simply said "OK, to do this quicker, let's cut through some red tape."
Then it gets into Cheney talking on Nightline and not directly answering the questions -- again, typical of Cheney, but nothing here's argued.
And finally, something something about Clinton Administration, complete with a sound byte from talk radio. (David R.M., I swear man, you listen to more talk radio than me). This is where your argument hinges on speculation: "Maybe he wants to absolve his own administration for 9/11." Maybe. Who knows.
In a world where bloggers and newspapers try to smash the Bush Administration with a sledgehammer, you remind me of a man diligently whittling it away with an icepick. But this post feels like you traded the icepick for a herring, per advice from the Knights Who Say Ni.
16 - Dave Nalle
Thanks for providing all those links. They didn't reveal anything new, but at least laid out the background.
Saying that Clinton did 'nothing' is not exactly spin, it's good old fashioned hyperbole. We can agree I think that he didn't do as much as anyone would have wanted with hindsight, and many of his efforts which you link to were either worthless or even negatives, such as the cruise missile attacks and Patriot Act-like rights restrictions - which are exactly what encorages domestic terrorists.
In addition, his substantive efforts were really focused on domestic terrorism because of the OKC attack, and his foreign efforts were pretty prefunctory. He doesn't get credit for prosecuting terrorists who were caught. Anyone would have done that.
I think that what his critics are getting at with their 'nothing' comments is that he didn't form a comprehensive policy or launch a campaign of rooting out terrorism as an institution. His solutions were like bandaids on a severed limb. He had some response to each specific situation, but no response to terrorism as a whole.
And I don't fault him for this at all, btw. We haven't had a plan for eradicating terrorism since long before Clinton, and it was already obvious it was a problem in the 1970s. The mentality for a long time was that terrorism was just part of the cost of doing business and that a few minor attacks here and there could be endured when compared to the cost in rights and money and lives of really addressing the problem.
And when they say Clinton did 'nothing', what they are ultimately saying is that he didn't solve the problem, which is obviously the case. We wouldn't have had a 9/11 attack if Clinton had solved the problem of terrorism, but again it's not terribly realistic to have expected him to do that.
Dave
17 - david r. mark
I have no complaint with that, Dave.
But you would agree that Ingraham (and others like her) say "nothing" as if to say "Clinton did nothing, which is why 9/11 occurred, so don't blame Bush." Agreed?
18 - david r. mark
Matthew, I appreciate your comments. I think I do try to whittle away, because there are a lot of facts out there, and rather than making a single sweeping statement, my preference is to tackle spin point by point.
That said, my post was designed to say, first and foremost, that Cheney isn't telling the truth in the Nightline interview. The factual basis for this is the existing FISA rule, which I and others believe Bush violated by conducting surveillance without the necessary warrants.
The Cheney interview was provided to show I'm not making this up. Those are his words, and you have a link to the interview. He doesn't answer Moran's question about the need to go to a court, possibly because he doesn't want to get caught in a lie ("we didn't need a warrant issued by a court," etc.)
As for the talk radio quote, just trying to put these things in some context. The Ingraham reference is obviously not the most important thing in the article.
P.S. Great Monty Python reference.
19 - Dave Nalle
But you would agree that Ingraham (and others like her) say "nothing" as if to say "Clinton did nothing, which is why 9/11 occurred, so don't blame Bush." Agreed?
Absolutely. And they're correct in that conclusion even if 'nothing' is hyperbole. Bush also did 'nothing' as they define it prior to 9/11. And they're right that neither should be blamed any more than the other.
Dave
20 - david r. mark
But Ingraham (and others) won't admit that Bush did nothing. She (and others) want to blame Clinton alone.
The 9/11 Commission, as I said in my post, was evenhanded in its blame.
21 - Matthew T. Sussman
NRO's Byron York has a possible explanation on why the FISA warrants were circumvented.
Column comes complete with FUBAR HTML footer, if you click on it soon enough.
22 - david r. mark
Bush could have changed the rules, and probably gotten support, in the Patriot Act.
He didn't.
York's opinion may reflect the truth of the situation. Is timeliness a defense for circumventing the law? I don't know if that would hold up in court.
And if York's theory is correct, doesn't that mean Cheney is lying by suggesting that Bush didn't circumvent the law?
23 - Dave Nalle
If you want to read the whole damned Patriot Act, I believe you'll find all sorts of surprising stuff in there, including provisions allowing the president to act without any kind of approval in situations he thinks are emergencies, and provisions allowing torture of suspects when it might lead to the immediate prevention of a terrorist act.
Dave
24 - david r. mark
I haven't seen that interpretation. Seems enough Republicans are up in arms (Graham, Specter) to suggest that Bush circumvented FISA, though.
25 - david r. mark
According to President Bush’s radio address today, as White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales personally approved Bush’s program for warrantless domestic wiretaps.
During his confirmation hearings for Attorney General in January 2005, Sen. Russ Feingold asked Gonzales about this precise issue:
SEN. FEINGOLD: I â€" Judge Gonzales, let me ask a broader question. I’m asking you whether in general the president has the constitutional authority, does he at least in theory have the authority to authorize violations of the criminal law under duly enacted statutes simply because he’s commander in chief? Does he â€" does he have that power?
MR. GONZALES: Senator, this president is not â€" I â€" it is not the policy or the agenda of this president to authorize actions that would be in contravention of our criminal statutes.
***
Is this perjury?