AP/Yahoo: Similar Wiretap Debate 30 Years Ago (Cheney/Rumsfeld)

[Patsy Stone]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060204/ap_on_go_pr_wh/ford_era_spying_1

By MARGARET EBRAHIM, Associated Press Writer
8 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - An intense debate erupted during the Ford administration over the president's powers to eavesdrop without warrants to gather foreign intelligence, according to newly disclosed government documents. George H.W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney are cited in the documents.

The roughly 200 pages of historic records obtained by The Associated Press reflect a remarkably similar dispute between the White House and Congress fully three decades before President Bush's acknowledgment he authorized wiretaps without warrants of some Americans in terrorism investigations.

<snip>

Some experts weren't surprised the cast of characters in this national debate remained largely unchanged over 30 years.

"People don't change their stripes," said Kenneth C. Bass a former senior Justice Department lawyer who oversaw such wiretap requests during the Carter administration.

<snip>

[Straight Shooter]

1. Let me guess: the three stooges were advocating wiretapping w/o warrants.

Always the same malevolent players, a bush, cheney and rumsfeld

[Patsy Stone]

5. They've always been obsessed

with the idea of an all-powerful potentate. They were trying to make sure no powers were taken away in the Nixon aftermath and, while they were at it, just adding a little more if they could.

:crazy:

[newscott]

9. This really is all about Nixon again isn't it?

I mean over thirty years later and we can't shake the specter. Ford should never have pardonned him. Nixon should have been tried publicly and then given time.

It would have done much more good for the country.

[Patsy Stone]

13. I agree

and yes, still about Nixon. Still about how to take over the world, starting with the US. Still, the usual suspects.

[HereSince1628]

15. I noticed the connections to the early 70's back in fall '02

It seems that 30 years has done nothing to change the way Rummy, Wolfy, Cheney, Perle and the gang view the world. It is all Team B mentality all the time.

[dchill]

16. I ditto you.

Ditto.

[StrafingMoose]

2. Which leads to the conclusion

That in Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al's view, the "terrorists" are those punching wholes in their lie packed stories and exposing their past as crooks, and not these "islamofascists".

[jasmeel]

3. Same crooks different decade.

[OKNancy]

4. Thank you Patsy Stone

:-)

[RamboLiberal]

6. Ah and they wanted to spy on Seymour Hersh

Surprise, surprise. And I bet they are again, he and other news people.

From article:

The documents include one startling similarity to Washington's current atmosphere over disclosures of classified information by the media. Notes from a 1975 meeting between Cheney, then White House chief of staff, then-Attorney General Edward Levi and others cite the "problem" of a New York Times article by Seymour Hersh about U.S. submarines spying inside Soviet waters. Participants considered a formal FBI investigation of Hersh and the Times and searching Hersh's apartment "to go after (his) papers," the document said.

"I was surprised," Hersh said in a telephone interview Friday. "I was surprised that they didn't know I had a house and a mortgage."

One option outlined at the 1975 meeting was to "ignore the Hersh story and hope it doesn't happen again." Participants worried about "will we get hit with violating the First Amendment to the Constitution?"

[fed-up]

7. Love Hersh's sense of humor in the article

The documents include one startling similarity to Washington's current atmosphere over disclosures of classified information by the media. Notes from a 1975 meeting between Cheney, then White House chief of staff, then-Attorney General Edward Levi and others cite the "problem" of a New York Times article by Seymour Hersh about U.S. submarines spying inside Soviet waters. Participants considered a formal FBI investigation of Hersh and the Times and searching Hersh's apartment "to go after (his) papers," the document said.

"I was surprised," Hersh said in a telephone interview Friday. "I was surprised that they didn't know I had a house and a mortgage."





Gee, illegal then, and still illegal now

[fooj]

8. "Cast of characters"...

Father knows best. :grr: :grr: :grr:

Peace.

[Megahurtz]

10. Or Poppy knows best?

:sarcasm:

[Patsy Stone]

20. I still think Poppy thinks Shrub's an idjit.

That's probably what he talks about with Bill.

"Your son's a bonehead."
"Yeah, I know. It was supposed to be Jeb."

:)

[katty]

11. Right, that's WHY the FISA...grasping at straws

[Gman]

12. The bastards have never quit, they've never given up

nor will they ever.

[2Design]

14. tactics to diffuse and complicate are the same as the pictures of torture

it is the pictures not the torture that is the problem according to this admin

same statement here with Goss - it is the leaks that are the problem not the violation or illegality of what they are doing

"CIA Director Porter Goss told lawmakers this week that recent disclosures about sensitive programs were severely damaging, and he urged prosecutors to impanel a grand jury to determine "who is leaking this information." The National Security Agency earlier asked the Justice Department to open a formal leaks investigation over press reports of its terrorism wiretaps."

this is the convulted thinking and the whole way this new rw republican crooked party is - the problem is never them but the people ratting them out

[Buford Pusser]

17. AP: Cheney, Rumsfeld Fought for Wiretaps for foreign intel 30 yrs ago

Bush recently said he needed wiretapping authority because FISA was old law, remember?

So what could be the rationale for the Cheney's and Rumsfeld's identical actions, pre-FISA?

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/AP_Cheney_Rumsfeld_fought_to_impose_0203.html

[Megahurtz]

18. Oh Jeez.

Anyone think that maybe Poppy is running Junior?

[Name removed]

19. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[bleever]

21. Excellent. Frame it as a reprise of an old defeated policy,

which is what it is.


:thumbsup:

[Patsy Stone]

22. I'm shocked. Shocked!

Someone's been listening to Lakoff. :hi:

[stevedeshazer]

23. Little has changed, except Cheney had hair.

[gauguin57]

24. PNAC chickens coming home to roost, "big time."

Creeps.

[casual hex]

25. Team B

In another echo from the past, Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney were also involved in an earlier case of talking up non existent weapons, this time involving the Russians. Just type Team B into Google and read all about it. They argued, the reason the CIA could not detect the masses of advanced weapons some experts (for "experts" read war corporation cut-outs) said Russia had was not because these weapons did not exists, but instead because they were so advanced and clandestine that the CIA did not posses the ability to detect them.

And of course this meant there had to be be increases in military spending and further irreconcilement with the USSR.

What's that thing about not learning from history. These people are unbelievable. They are vermin, and everything they have ever done has only damaged this country and the world.

How did we let them get at the control desk again?

[laheina]

26. Great post!

Thanks casual hex, and welcome to DU. :hi:

[laheina]

27. Some reading for you all on Team B

http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=apr93cahn

http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=140711

Interesting stuff.

[Patsy Stone]

28. Great post

Welcome to DU!

[screembloodymurder]

29. How can they argue legality when the law was written

because of their previous actions. They knowingly broke the law! They're not arguing the law. They're arguing that they are above the law. We cannot let them get away with this blatant disregard for the Constitution and the separation of powers.

[tanyev]

30. The Armageddon Plan - Cheney/Rumsfeld 1980s

At least once a year during the 1980s Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld vanished. Cheney was working diligently on Capitol Hill, as a congressman rising through the ranks of the Republican leadership. Rumsfeld, who had served as Gerald Ford's Secretary of Defense, was a hard-driving business executive in the Chicago area—where, as the head of G. D. Searle & Co., he dedicated time and energy to the success of such commercial products as Nutra-Sweet, Equal, and Metamucil. Yet for periods of three or four days at a time no one in Congress knew where Cheney was, nor could anyone at Searle locate Rumsfeld. Even their wives were in the dark; they were handed only a mysterious Washington phone number to use in case of emergency.

After leaving their day jobs Cheney and Rumsfeld usually made their way to Andrews Air Force Base, outside Washington. From there, in the middle of the night, each man—joined by a team of forty to sixty federal officials and one member of Ronald Reagan's Cabinet—slipped away to some remote location in the United States, such as a disused military base or an underground bunker. A convoy of lead-lined trucks carrying sophisticated communications equipment and other gear would head to each of the locations.

Rumsfeld and Cheney were principal actors in one of the most highly classified programs of the Reagan Administration. Under it U.S. officials furtively carried out detailed planning exercises for keeping the federal government running during and after a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The program called for setting aside the legal rules for presidential succession in some circumstances, in favor of a secret procedure for putting in place a new "President" and his staff. The idea was to concentrate on speed, to preserve "continuity of government," and to avoid cumbersome procedures; the speaker of the House, the president pro tempore of the Senate, and the rest of Congress would play a greatly diminished role.

A few details about the effort have come to light over the years, but nothing about the way it worked or the central roles played by Cheney and Rumsfeld. The program is of particular interest today because it helps to explain the thinking and behavior of the second Bush Administration in the hours, days, and months after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Vice President Cheney urged President Bush to stay out of Washington for the rest of that day; Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld ordered his deputy Paul Wolfowitz to get out of town; Cheney himself began to move from Washington to a series of "undisclosed locations"; and other federal officials were later sent to work outside the capital, to ensure the continuity of government in case of further attacks. All these actions had their roots in the Reagan Administration's clandestine planning exercises.
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0318-14.htm


Practiced for 20 years on what to do after a disaster happened. Work to prevent that disaster? Not so much.

[Wordie]

31. K&R