Gonzales Ducks Question On When Spying Idea Was Hatched

[JABBS]

Did Alberto Gonzales, then the White House counsel, approve the Bush Administration's warrantless surveillance program after Congress authorized the administration to use "all necessary and appropriate force" to stop Al Qaeda?

That would be the expected order of events -- you get authorization, and then you act -- but the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday wanted Gonzales, now the Attorney General, to confirm as much on the record.

Unfortunately, Gonzales wasn't interested in answering it when he spoke -- amazingly, not under oath -- to the committee.

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY (D-VT): Attorney general, I understand. I was here when that attack happened, and I join with Republicans and Democrats and virtually every member of this Congress to try to give you the tools that you said you needed for us to go after Al-Qaeda, and especially to go after Osama bin Laden, the man that we all understood masterminded the attack, the man who is still at large. Now, back to my question, did you come to the conclusion that you had to have this warrantless wiretapping of Americans inside the United States to protect us before the president signed the resolution on September 18, 2001? You were the White House counsel at the time.

GONZALES: What I can say is that we came to a conclusion that the president had the authority to authorize this kind of activity before he actually authorized the activity.

***

This item first apperaed at JABBS.

[Avalux]

1. The spying started before 9/11

and it was formerly known as TIA or Total Information Awareness, a Pentagon undertaking that was to keep track of vast quantities of information on just about everyone - started by John Poindexter. When the program was stopped in 2003, it simply went underground to the NSA.

Sneaky little bastard.

[savemefromdumbya]

4. and we wouldn't have known any of this was happening?

that is the ordinary citizens being spied on

[Avalux]

6. We knew about TIA -

Poindexter resigned over the civil liberties flap it created. Since the public didn't accept the program, they simply shifted all the resources, etc. to the NSA to continue in secret.

[savemefromdumbya]

8. I guess people not aquainted with politics wouldn't have a clue

[JABBS]

9. wasn't that the one ...

where they were asking people to make bets on where the next terrorist attack would be?

If so, that was after 9/11.

[savemefromdumbya]

2. That was before 9/11

[Botany]

3. Gonzo can't touch that .... because they were spying prior to 9-11

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x346899


So not only does that blow out of the water "protect us from attack story" but it was 9-11
that justified the wiretaps.

[savemefromdumbya]

5. This key point needs to be clarified in court

[Supersedeas]

10. but what a blow to the 'would have prevented 9/11 premise'

[mikeanike]

7. what BS

they'll ue the patented "national security" excuse if they get pressed to hard over that issue.

[AtomicKitten]

11. At what point do Dems call BS on this charade?

I'm tired of this crap. I want them sworn in and real questions asked.

[KansDem]

12. This is quite serious...

Not to suggest that everything else isn't, but consider:

1) In the obligatory meeting between incoming and outgoing presidents, Clinton warned Bush about al Qaeda (and bin Laden):

The Bush Administration neglected warnings by outgoing Clinton staff during its transition into office. In his testimony before the independent commission investigating the September 11 terrorist attacks, Secretary of State Colin Powell admitted that the Bush Administration had been briefed by outgoing Clinton Administration officials: "the outgoing Administration provided me and others in the incoming Administration with transition papers as well as briefings that reinforced our awareness of the worldwide threat from terrorism." (3/23/04). Daniel Benjamin, author of The Age of Sacred Terror, reported that Brian Sheridan, an assistant secretary of Defense under President Clinton, stated "I offered to brief anyone, any time on any topic . Never took it up." (Los Angeles Times, 3/30/04) Mr. Benjamin also noted that Don Kerrick, a three-star general who served as President Clinton's deputy National Security Advisor and continued through the first four months of the Bush Administration, issued a memo to the new National Security Council leadership about al Qaeda, saying, "We are going to be struck again." He never heard back: "I don't think it was above the waterline. They were gambling nothing would happen."

http://democrats.senate.gov/dpc/dpc-new.cfm?doc_name=fs-108-2-99

2) Bush began wiretapping before 9/11. In fact, he authorized surveillance on Americans soon after his inauguration:

The National Security Agency advised President Bush in early 2001 that it had been eavesdropping on Americans during the course of its work monitoring suspected terrorists and foreigners believed to have ties to terrorist groups, according to a declassified document.

The NSA's vast data-mining activities began shortly after Bush was sworn in as president and the document contradicts his assertion that the 9/11 attacks prompted him to take the unprecedented step of signing a secret executive order authorizing the NSA to monitor a select number of American citizens thought to have ties to terrorist groups.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11558.htm

One supposes that Bush would be wiretapping al Qaeda operatives in America, but, since 19 of them "got through" to attack on 9/11/01, we can only surmise that 1) he's grossly incompetent, 2) he knew about 9/11 beforehand but chose to ignore it for PNAC reasons, or 3) both.