He's snookered the ever-predictable Democrats into an obvious political trap.
What are Democats weakest on with independent voters? National security, obviously. So when they make a huge stink about the NSA terrorist surveillance program, who benefits? Republicans. Why? Well, most Americans (not all) don't want another 9/11.
Here's a report from one of them:
SAVES LIVES? DO IT
By DEBRA BURLINGAME
DO you remember Rick Rescorla? He was the Morgan Stanley security chief who persistently warned Port Authority officials before the first World Trade Center bombing that the Twin Towers were vulnerable to terrorist attack. They didn't listen.
After six people died in the 1993 bombing, Rescorla repeatedly drilled employees on evacuation procedures. On 9/11, after the first jet slammed into Tower One at 8:46 a.m., he ignored the official order to send his workforce back to their desks in the south tower.
"Everything above where that plane hit is going to collapse," he told a friend over the phone. "I'm getting my people the [expletive] out of here."
The 62-year-old Vietnam veteran grabbed a bullhorn and led hundreds of people out of the building, singing "God Bless America" to keep them from losing their nerve, going back again and again for stragglers.
He's credited with evacuating 2,700 people, but did not save himself.
Listening to members of Congress argue about the National Security Agency (NSA) terrorist-surveillance program brought Rescorla to mind. What would he think about all the dry legal arguments concerning the president's authority for intercepting al Qaeda conversations?
I think the decorated war hero would say, "If it'll it save my people, do it."
Missing in the debate over the program to eavesdrop on suspected terrorists without a warrant is the question of whether or not it works.
After The New York Times seized on an illegal leak to reveal the secret program's existence last month,
Rep. Jane Harman, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and one of the "Gang of Eight" given a full briefing on the program, said, "I believe the program is essential to U.S. national security and that its disclosure has damaged critical intelligence capabilites."
Gen. Michael Hayden, the principal deputy director of national intelligence (appointed to his previous job as NSA director by President Bill Clinton), said — "unequivocally" — that we've gotten intelligence information that "otherwise would not be available."
A 2004 NBC report graphically illustrated what not having this program cost us 41/2 years ago. In 1999, the NSA began monitoring a known al Qaeda "switchboard" in Yemen that relayed calls from Osama bin Laden to operatives all over world. The surveillance picked up the phone number of a "Khalid" in the United States — but the NSA didn't intercept those calls, fearing it would be accused of "domestic spying."
After 9/11, investigators learned that "Khalid" was Khalid al-Mihdhar, then living in San Diego under his own name — one of the hijackers who flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon. He made more than a dozen calls to the Yemen house, where his brother-in-law lived.
NBC news called this "one of the missed clues that could have saved 3,000 lives."
One of the country's top legal scholars, federal Judge Richard A. Posner, recently asked this question: If the NSA program is vital to our national defense and the intrusion on civil liberties is slight, shouldn't that alone justify the president's decision to deploy it?
In a world where terrorists are trying to use chemical, biological and radiological weapons against us — weapons capable of destroying large areas of cities or infecting massive numbers of people with a deadly virus — shouldn't Congress be more concerned about protecting a program that can stop them, not fighting over who gets to control it?
Some in Congress argue that the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is the sole operating authority for any secret eavesdropping. But under FISA, enacted back in the days of 8-track tapes and rotary phones, the procedure for getting a warrant isn't fast enough to catch terrorists using multiple throwaway cellphones and DSL Web connections.
Even FISA's 72-hour "emergency bypass" requires a written opinion by NSA lawyers and certification from the attorney general before the intercept can be initiated.
Gen. Hayden and those familiar with the FISA process contend that it is simply too slow for the "hot pursuit" of terrorist communications.
Since even the most "outraged" members of Congress haven't actually called for the president to stop the eavesdropping program, one suspects that it is every bit as vital and effective as Gen. Hayden says it is. Those crying foul in the wake of the program's disclosure haven't offered a workable alternative, other than including more people on the briefing list or rewriting the law itself — which means fully disclosing a highly-classified program to 535 members of Congress and their staffs. Is there anyone in America who believes that 1,000 people on Capitol Hill can keep these operational details quiet?
The president has briefed leaders in Congress on the program a dozen times. The Justice Department has subjected the program to 45 periodic reviews to ensure that its scope is limited and narrow. Meanwhile, we're at war against a ruthless enemy who will exploit every advantage in order to kill innocent Americans and wreak havoc on our cities.
In the words of legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin, "We cannot allow our Constitution and our shared sense of decency to become a suicide pact." I think Rick Rescorla would agree.
Debra Burlingame, a former attorney, is the sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame, pilot of American Airlines Flight 77, which was crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11.
No comments:
Post a Comment