Bob Graham: "I was not informed of a domestic surveillance program."

[seafan]

From Knight-Ridder:


snip

Former Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., who chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2002, said he wasn't informed of the domestic surveillance program. In an interview, Graham recalled a 2002 meeting in Vice President Dick Cheney's office about a far more narrow plan by the National Security Agency to intercept communications from outside the United States to other foreign destinations that rely on U.S. satellite links.

"What the administration did was not justified," Graham said. "You don't fight terrorism by taking away the constitutional liberties of U.S. citizens. ... I never saw a situation of extreme urgency that would warrant this."

snip

Government officials told the newspaper that government eavesdroppers sought court-approved warrants only for conversations within the United States, not for overseas calls. The paper reported that "hundreds, perhaps thousands of people inside the United States" have been targeted for monitoring over the past three years.

"The president has, in effect, created an off-the-books surveillance procedure without any legislative authority," said Marc Rotenberg, a law professor at Georgetown University and executive director of the Electronic Security Information Center, a civil liberties group. "The president has claimed an extraordinary power, the right to conduct surveillance without judicial review. He is in a place where no president has been before."

snip

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/13426057.htm

[chelsea0011]

1. Of course he wasn't informed. He was on the spy list.

[C_U_L8R]

2. He should demand the list

I'm sure there are more political enemies
being wiretapped than actual terrorists.

Just ask that shithead Bolton... he's supposed to
have tapped all sorts of "domestic enemies"

Is Dubya channeling Dick Nixon's ghost or something???

[chelsea0011]

3. Freedom of Information Act

[Hubert Flottz]

4. You are probably right.

Robert Byrd was hot about the spying yesterday on the senate floor. I wish I had a transcript of his short POWERFUL speech. Even Byrd was shocked and totally pissed!

[notadmblnd]

6. I don't know how anyone can be shocked

we've been screaming since the inception of the PA that this kinda shit was going to happen. At the time everyone just said..... Awaaaaah.. our government would never let them get away with something like that".. Well, now we'll see won't we?

[Hubert Flottz]

10. It's not that I didn't expect it and dread it.

And I myself didn't trust Bush, EVER, but the gravity of this situation is shocking and overpowering! And Bush is trying to play it down like it didn't mean Jack Shit! To see it laid bare and exposed is stunning. The Nazis are HERE!

[HysteryDiagnosis]

7. After some of the things he stated just after 911.... yes, he was on

the list.

[bahrbearian]

5. Chimpy said that Congressional leaders knew,, should

Bob be asking Delay or Hastert?

[SammyWinstonJack]

8. Chimpy also said that members of Congress had the same intelligence

info he had with regard to WMDs and he lied about that. Why should he be believed at all?

[librechik]

9. Sen. Durbin said much the same thing on MSNBC

Chimpy is insane. Somebody get the football away from him, please!

[seafan]

11. They're gaslighting us as hard as they can.

1. They repeatedly tie Saddam to 9-11; yet now say they "never tied Saddam to 9-11."

2. They repeatedly frightened us with 'Saddam has WMD's'; yet now they say "sorry, but the intelligence was faulty."

3. They assure us repeatedly that 'we do not torture'; yet now we are seeing and hearing about egregious physical and psychological treatment and murder of detainees.

4. They assure us that we are not flying prisoners off to some foreign land for 'rendition'; yet now we have overwhelming evidence of secret CIA flights, secret prisons, outsourced torture to countries known for human rights abuses during interrogation.

5. They assure us that they have our civil liberties in mind; yet now we learn that this administration has repeatedly conducted unwarranted spying on us, right here in America, without court approval, without any oversight by Congress, and without any control over what or how this secret information is being used against us. And make no mistake, they are using this information against us. Why? Because we disagree with what they are doing to America.


It is time to remove them from office. It is time for court conviction and imprisonment for every one of them, for the entire world to see.

This is not America.


Keep speaking truth to (illegitimate) power, Senator Graham.

[seafan]

12. From the Washington Post, Sunday, December 18, 2005, page A01

snip

Former senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.), who chaired the Senate intelligence committee and is the only participant thus far to describe the meetings extensively and on the record, said in interviews Friday night and yesterday that he remembers "no discussion about expanding to include conversations of U.S. citizens or conversations that originated or ended in the United States" -- and no mention of the president's intent to bypass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

"I came out of the room with the full sense that we were dealing with a change in technology but not policy," Graham said, with new opportunities to intercept overseas calls that passed through U.S. switches. He believed eavesdropping would continue to be limited to "calls that initiated outside the United States, had a destination outside the United States but that transferred through a U.S.-based communications system."

Graham said the latest disclosures suggest that the president decided to go "beyond foreign communications to using this as a pretext for listening to U.S. citizens' communications. There was no discussion of anything like that in the meeting with Cheney."

The high-ranking intelligence official, who spoke with White House permission but said he was not authorized to be identified by name, said Graham is "misremembering the briefings," which in fact were "very, very comprehensive." The official declined to describe any of the substance of the meetings, but said they were intended "to make sure the Hill knows this program in its entirety, in order to never, ever be faced with the circumstance that someone says, 'I was briefed on this but I had no idea that -- ' and you can fill in the rest."

By Graham's account, the official said, "it appears that we held a briefing to say that nothing is different . . . . Why would we have a meeting in the vice president's office to talk about a change and then tell the members of Congress there is no change?"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/17/AR2005121701233.html


Remember, Senator Graham keeps detailed logs of his interactions and daily events. This fact obliterates the above "high-ranking intelligence official's" fatuous claim against Graham's memory.

[Rose Siding]

13. Pelosi's statement substantiates that.

While the WH says Graham is "misremebering" :eyes:

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), who was also present as then ranking Democrat of the House intelligence panel, said in a statement yesterday evening that the briefing described "President Bush's decision to provide authority to the National Security Agency to conduct unspecified activities." She said she "expressed my strong concerns" but did not elaborate.