A Real Bush Lie
A debate has been raging on this blog (starting here) about whether Bush is a liar, with people on the left trying to come up with lies Bush has told, and people on the right shooting down each submission with ease.
The lefties are doing a pathetic job of coming up with Bush lies — but there is a real one out there. Let’s see you right-wingers shoot down this Bush lie:
[A]ny time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires — a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so. It’s important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution.
I guess it depends on the meaning of “wiretap,” or “court,” or “order.” Or “anytime.”
The White House transcript says these remarks were made in April 2004.
Personally, I am having a hard time thinking of a plausible justification for what appears to be an evident lie by the President. What do you say, right-wing Patterico readers? Can you put any lipstick on this pig?
UPDATE: Several commenters have argued that Bush had to lie because the program was secret. I expected someone might make this argument. But it wasn’t like he was asked a question at a press conference and lied; he had no need to tell a lie about the program. He could have simply remained silent.
Bill Clinton could have argued that he lied about sex so that he could remain in power — for national security reasons, of course. I bet that he rationalized it in just this way.
In my opinion, this is a very poor excuse for lying to the American people, especially when the lie is volunteered in this fashion. It makes me wonder what else Bush is lying (or ridiculously uninformed) about.
UPDATE x2: Other commenters argue that the secret surveillance program did not involve wiretapping, contrary to press accounts that suggest that it did. I’m not expert in these matters, and it’s clear that many details of the program remain unclear. This, to me, is a possible defense, whereas the “Bush was lying to fool our enemies” defense doesn’t wash, in my opinion.
What makes you think the NSA uses wiretaps to capture SIGINT?
antimedia (8d822a) — 12/22/2005 @ 10:42 pmI know it sounds Clintonesque, but I bet what Bush meant by “wiretaps” is exactly what the word originally meant, secretly installing an eavesdropping device in a wired, terrestial phone system. That is the genesis of the word and it is the image one conjours up when the word is said.
What much of the general public doesn’t realize is that many of the long-distance calls made within and outside of the country are bundled together and uplinked to commercial communication satellites and can be easily intercepted without having to “tap” any phone lines. Years ago I used to connect a communications receiver (similar to a police scanner) to the output of my satellite dish and was amazed to hear long distance phone calls in the clear. No encryption was used, no descrambling was required. I was doing this in the privacy of my own home using commercially-available equipment to monitor the public airwaves, there was no “tap” involved.
I’m sure things are much more sophisticated these days with digital encoding and encryption and that specialized equipment is required. But the point still stands, we aren’t talking about sneaking into someone’s house and hooking up a tape recorder like an old episode of Mission Impossible. It is the job of NSA (and other organizations) to monitor transmitted telephony and internet traffic for key words and slogans. It happens all the time and has been going on for years.
Jeff (b207d6) — 12/22/2005 @ 11:13 pmThere seems to be a deliberate misunderstanding of what wiretap means today. There’s a tip that a very dangerous phone call is to be made at 2PM from a pay phone in California to Houston or the Middle East. It is totally easy to record all those 1000s of phone calls with a bunch of computers purchased from DELL.
Nearly everyone agrees the government should monitor calls of pending big attacks. The comments on this issue are totally political. It’s obvious from my comment here that I’m a Bush supporter.
How hard would it have been for President Bush to convince voters of the need for a *clear* law to allow what he is accused of doing? Bush, Ashcroft, and Gonzolas fucked up.
Mike W (c20d28) — 12/22/2005 @ 11:26 pmWhat makes you think the NSA uses wiretaps to capture SIGINT?
Antimedia,
You have experience with this stuff and I don’t. Do you have a real reason to believe that the intercepts we have heard about in the past few days do not include wiretaps? If so, could you elaborate, and tell me what you think the government is using, and your basis for believing that wiretaps are not involved?
Obviously, many news stories over the past few days have used the word “wiretap” in connection with this story. It sounds like you think this is inaccurate. So fill us in.
This is not a confrontation or a challenge, just a question. If you really have the reason that the apparent lie is not a lie at all, then we need to spread that message.
Patterico (806687) — 12/22/2005 @ 11:34 pmJeff,
I follow your point, but the media has been using the word “wiretap” to describe the intercepts. Do we know this is not true?
And you’re right: even if this is the answer, I gotta say it sounds pretty damn Clintonesque. And we both know that’s not a compliment.
Patterico (806687) — 12/22/2005 @ 11:36 pmHe probably meant domestic wiretapping. Which the NSA program recently revealed did not engage in.
Milhouse (3f7ff6) — 12/22/2005 @ 11:59 pmI agree with Milhouse; the distinction is likely between domestic wiretapping vs spying on foreign agents; i.e. law-enforcement activites require a warrant; conducting a war does not.
I read the relevant portions of the original transcript. Bush is talking almost simultaneously about both activities and there’s no way to separate with certainty which half he was referring to; he jumps back & forth between them. He might have even been confused about the separation himself at the time, or been referring to taps on drug lords’ wholly international calls, or been thinking about the connections between drugs & terrorists (e.g. Shining Path, Afghan opium, etc).
Or, as you say Patterico, he could have been doing it deliberately, perhaps in the hopes of catching AQ with its guard down.
In any event, I doubt it’s based on a parsing of what the word “wiretap” technically refers to, interesting as that discussion is. It could be, but I doubt it. The law-enforcement vs war-conduct angle seems the most probable explanation as to how it might have been an honest misunderstanding, if it was.
If there’s a real issue in all this, it’s the potential spread of surveillance from the War On Terror and into the War On Drugs. I would bet that when the issue comes up for debate, and after the initial j’accusing settles down, that that’ll be the centerpiece of the args.
We might well see both sides settle for modifications that’d restrict Patriot Act powers explicitly to the former. Then everyone would be left with a banner to wave, and isn’t that the point?
ras (f9de13) — 12/23/2005 @ 12:42 amThink: Bletchley Park. The WWII Brit-led effort that cracked the Enigma Codes of Nazi Germany, or the US-led “Magic” effort that cracked the codes of the Japanese.
Both were the convergence of lots of money, lots of technology, lots of data gathering, and brilliant minds left on their own mostly. To provide decisive info to help defeat the enemy. This is likely why the Al Qaeda attacks fizzled here despite succeeding against the best of the counter-terrorism best: India, UK, Spain, Turkey, Jordan all with extensive experience defeating terrorists on their native soil and have little to no legal restrictions on police/counter-terrorism actions.
That’s probably what the NSA “wiretap” efforts are. They are very likely NOT people actively listening in real-time or recorded to conversations. Not enough men in the US to do that. Instead we probably have something highly classified and of incredible scale and equivalent to the program “Snort” which examines TCP/IP traffic to look for network intrusions.
Point being it’s not wiretapping. What is likely occurring is massive collection of very diverse data sets and extensive analysis to produce a small set of phone calls to foreign countries where the legal authority to do is inherent or at least arguable; and the results are likely useful. Likely purely domestic calls still require a court order. It might not even be phone calls. It might be other sets of data that human examination can determine to be indicative of a pre-strike terrorist or someone purely innocuous. Such as credit card purchases.
I will venture that we will use this technology plus money plus brilliant men to keep us safe; or we won’t and the laws will be used to protect civil liberties instead of lives. Thus when attacks succeed the brilliant men who could have stopped them will be sure to tell us politics kept them from saving lives; and the result will be ugly. Ironically I don’t think that merely collecting data inside a computer system where no human being sees the data and analysis is done to provide anomalous patterns is a violation of civil liberties. Your credit card company does this as part of anti-fraud monitoring.
We’ll get the Ferdinand and Isabella solution to terrorism. It is self-evident that if there are no Muslims in the US; and none allowed in; there is zero possibility of Muslim terrorists attacking us inside the US. It’s the unspoken truth. If the law fundamentally does not serve to protect lives when the men and means are there, then people will take the law into their own hands, last seen in the 1991 LA Riots, where the LAPD disappeared, Reginald Denny was nearly beaten to death on live TV; total chaos and looting reigned, and everyone who had a gun guarded his or her property on a shoot to kill basis. If Democrats wanted to create a mob they couldn’t have gone about it better. Down the line that’s what they’ll get. To my disgust.
Jim Rockford (628e3c) — 12/23/2005 @ 1:31 amJim Rockford: Damn well said.
Old Coot (2f7b84) — 12/23/2005 @ 5:12 amWhile I don’t think Bush is above trying to pull a Clinton (what is or is not a wiretap, domestic or not, etc.), I don’t he’s good (smart) enough to pull it off.
I think it’s simply that Bush was given some talking points by someone out of the loop regarding the NSA intercepts and Bush didn’t realize that those comments were no longer ‘operative’…
steve sturm (d3e296) — 12/23/2005 @ 5:47 amHow about this: Occam’s Razor. He needed to discuss the Patriot Act without disclosing the frickin’ secret program.
Oh, Lawdamercy! He told an untruth to keep a national security program secret. Impeach the mutha!
Attila (Pillage Idiot) (dfa1f1) — 12/23/2005 @ 6:31 amExactly Attila, since it was a secret program, he couldn’t expose the dastardly snooping.
Tillman (1cf529) — 12/23/2005 @ 6:38 amI chose to look up “wire taps” at Wikipedia (since it is believed to be the source of all truth…Ha). While it discusses over-the-air collection of telephone signals via satellites or from cell phone towers, “wire tap” appears to be a specific method of recording conversations through the telephone exchange. They discuss it under the headline “The official tapping of phone lines.” All other methods are “unofficial” to Wikipedia.
Jim Barnes (7f9027) — 12/23/2005 @ 7:01 amAlso, to me anyway, when I hear of wire taps it conjures the image of a criminal investigation. I don’t believe it would be worthwhile to expose a secret method of collecting enemy information solely to prosecute someone for anything.
Jim Rockford’s reference to Bletchley Park is quite important.
The fact that the Allies were reading the German (and Japanese) codes meant that the Allies couldn’t use the information in every instance, because at some point, the Germans would start wondering why convoys that their subs had reported had conveniently altered course before the rest of the Wolf-pack arrived.
Think that one through carefully.
In order to protect the information and its sources, merchant sailors were going to be allowed to die. This is not simply a matter of fudging whether we’re listening or not, this is a matter of deliberately allowing people to die, because it was more important to protect a secret than the lives of hundreds, maybe thousands of sailors.
Or maybe even a city. It’s long been claimed that Churchill allowed the city of Coventry to be levelled b/c the information was derived from Ultra (German codes) and b/c it was early in the war (when there were fewer potential alternate “sources” that information could be pinned to).
Notice, too, that revealing classified information about communications intelligence is one of the items that is specifically listed as liable to criminal prosecution. Why? Because it is a war-winning advantage.
Lurking Observer (ea88e8) — 12/23/2005 @ 7:01 amMilhouse is right; the context was domestic wiretaps. The sentence that preceded the quote was “Secondly, there are such things as roving wiretaps.” Was Bush’s statement a bit too broad? Maybe, but do we really want to use the L-word on every President who makes any statements about the general rules of anything without throwing in a lawyerly “Some exceptions apply. Not applicable in wartime. See store for details. Consult your Constitution for all the terms and conditions” disclaimer every time?
Here’s the easiest way to know that this Bush “lie” isn’t: Timothy Noah says it is.
Xrlq (428dfd) — 12/23/2005 @ 7:09 amMy guess is that the NSA is trapping VoIP calls to and from foreign agents.
I think that VoIP(voice over the Internet) is probably not covered by the wiretapes comment in that is was created long after the controlling laws were written. Unencrypted VoIP traffic carried across the Internet is information on a public medium.
Monitoring VoIP does not require a point-to-point physical connection, and we already know that terrorists make extensive use of the Internet.
Jeff Crump (4c3c19) — 12/23/2005 @ 7:15 amObviously the answer to that question is classified. In any case, it’s the MSM bandying about the term “wiretap” loosely enough to hide an elephant under a bedsheet.
The big issue is this: If the President lies for national security reasons, is it really a lie (or just an elaborate deception meant to keep our enemies unaware)?
Polunatic (013ee3) — 12/23/2005 @ 7:19 amIn understanding the meaning of any comment made by any individual is to understand its context. Note in the comment you have bold, “Any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap.” Now consider, would the goverment talk about classified programs, no, they would not. Thus, within the context in which he spook he is correct. Note also, it would be foolish to make the distinction more obvious since to do so would blow the classifed program and end its usefulness, not a very good idea, thus, his answer given its context is correct and reasonable.
Phil (f1ed96) — 12/23/2005 @ 7:28 amIn the context of protecting our national interests, no.
If a reporter asked President Roosevelt, “Are we going to attack Omaha beach at dawn?” Answering this question truthfully and directly would have caused the needless deaths of our servicemen and put the invasion at risk, even the outcome of the war.
Jeff Crump (4c3c19) — 12/23/2005 @ 7:28 amAs with others here, I’m fine with the President lying for national security reasons. If the President lies about sex, that pisses me off.
Regret (22cb76) — 12/23/2005 @ 8:05 amTo repeat my point, I do not say Bush lied for national security reason. I am saying that the context of statement he is not speaking to that context. thus, assumtions that he has lied is incorect since you are placing the comment into a context in which it was not intended.
Phil (f1ed96) — 12/23/2005 @ 8:11 amThank God the president is NOT a lawyer.
exguru (8d0335) — 12/23/2005 @ 8:18 amOf course he “lied”. How many “lies” have been told in defense of the United States, say, since November 1941? If it would help defeat the Jihadis, I would not care what lie he told. I don’t want the rights of U.S. citizens restricted, but I want the evil, murderous animals that are publicly stating that they want to kill us us all hunted down and destroyed. The sooner and more effectively, the better. I don’t know if it’s lipstick on the pig, but looking at the real threat as clearly as possible is a good idea. If Pr. Bush has told a dangerous lie, it the one he was repeating a couple of years ago about the “religion of peace.”
ASM826 (f298ac) — 12/23/2005 @ 8:26 amIt seems to me that the context is in the mind of the speaker and not the listener. In the case of national security, why would a speaker implicitly inform any listener of the subtext of the message.
You can not prove that the President didn’t have that concern at the time he made that statement.
Jeff Crump (4c3c19) — 12/23/2005 @ 8:35 amHow about this: Occam’s Razor. He needed to discuss the Patriot Act without disclosing the frickin’ secret program.
See UPDATE. I expected someone would make this argument.
Patterico (806687) — 12/23/2005 @ 8:49 amWait a minute, Patterico. He lied indirectly because he was talking about that Patriot Act and said we get court orders. That part was correct, but it implied something that was false — that we always get court orders no matter what the program. No one knew there was any other program.
To remain silent about not having court orders for the NSA wiretapping, he would have had to say (a) under the Patriot Act we always have court orders but not under some other secret programs; or (b) nothing about court orders under the Patriot Act. I suppose he could have said “I’m speaking only about the Patriot Act” but that would have sent reporters wild with questions about what else he could be talking about.
I really don’t think being silent works.
Attila (Pillage Idiot) (dfa1f1) — 12/23/2005 @ 9:02 am“Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem”
Jeff Crump (4c3c19) — 12/23/2005 @ 9:07 amOK, Jeff, for those of us who don’t speak French, what does that mean?
(I really know it’s not French)
Harry Arthur (b318a5) — 12/23/2005 @ 9:15 amOccam’s Razor in Latin.
Patterico (806687) — 12/23/2005 @ 9:34 amWhether Bush had to “lie” to protect national security is irrelevant to whether the “lie” was or was not a “lie” – it’s an argument he was justified in “lying,” which is a different question. The real question is whether every time someone makes a general statement he is “lying” solely because he doesn’t simultaneously disclose every known exception to the rule.
If President Clinton had said cops can’t search your home without a warrant, would anyone have called him a liar because after all, warrantless searches are allowed under certain circumstances? I think not. All this non-lie proves is how desperate the Bush-bashers are to come up with some “lie” they can pin on the administration, and how overly eager some conservatives are to be “fair” to the other side.
Xrlq (ffb240) — 12/23/2005 @ 9:52 amXrlq, I appreciate the distinction you make, but if Clinton had said that any time the FBI searches your home, there’ll always be a warrant, so don’t worry, or something to that effect, it reasonably could be understood to imply there are no exceptions.
So you’ll just have to concur in the judgment.
Attila (Pillage Idiot) (dfa1f1) — 12/23/2005 @ 10:25 amA great exercise, Patterico! I came up only with “disinformation” or else true ignorance on Bush’s part that the President does not need warrants to tap wires in time of war, or whatever you want to call the WOT instead that supercedes the “criminal” investigation category.
This insightful discussion has led me to believe that Bush’s statement is a form of disinformation and that the data gathering/mining is not “wire tapping” – though it’s ok with me if it is or includes classic wire tapping.
I think Bush’s genuineness is something the LLL hates from the very ground of its being and leads to its rather Freudian projection that Bush is either dumb or evil. Overall, I have concluded that the LLL lives nearly completely in a fantasy world.
Joe Peden (ffccb8) — 12/23/2005 @ 10:32 amBased on what we know of the NSA operations (thanks to the NY Times), I think the word “wiretap” was chosen deliberately to tell the truth. On its own, I believe the statement to be factual. Wiretaps are not conducted without a court order. I can’t say that any have been done or have not been done without a court order; I merely believe it to be so. Now, President Bush’s statement does not make any mention or warrant that other means of surveillance are not conducted without a court order. A wiretap is completely a criminal enterprise. They are conducted with as much due process as can be achieved in order to use them as evidence. I don’t think we are trying to convict any terrorists except in the case of US citizens. We are trying to stop them and kill them if necessary.
Jim Barnes (7f9027) — 12/23/2005 @ 11:27 amBack from a long lunch and feeling kinda of sleepy but here’s another thought …
Since some aspect of the NSA kerfuffle revolves around “technology”, and I believe that the technology issue revolves around VoIP, let me pose a scenario:
Three people are in a room, where two are speaking in a conversation directed only at each other. The third person can easily over hear the conversation. In this situation, there can be no expectation of privacy. Unlike a telephone conversation.
The early days of VoIP were like this. Encryption of VoIP only came about as it became a commercial enterprise. So, with the Internet as a public medium can there be any expectation of privacy unless encryption is used?
I think not, since e-commerice requires a special secure connection commonly known as SSL (secure socket layer). You’ll see https:// instead of http:// on your brower’s address line.
If a terrorist was using an old, non-commerical VoIP point-to-point system then their conversations would be open to the public … if you knew how to parse it out.
However, if it comes out that the NSA is able to hear what you are saying, then they would have a Eureka moment and switch to an encrypted channel. And thus becomming much, much, much more difficult to intercept.
Just letting it out that special permission is necessary to intercep a new “technical” convseration “lets the cat is out of the bag”.
Would the NSA be required to get a warrant to stand in a room with lots of loud conversations and listen in?
Jeff Crump (4c3c19) — 12/23/2005 @ 11:48 am[…] […]
damnum absque injuria » (38c04c) — 12/23/2005 @ 12:19 pmI think the boys at Powerline have answered this question. Conclusion: Not a lie.
In law school, my criminal law professor was G. Robert Blakey, who wrote the federal wiretapping statutes (and RICO). That was back when communications were done over “wires.” Communications on wires are impossible to “tap” unless one has access to the actual wire. If someone communicates by radio, say CB, is it a “wiretap” to listen in with a receiver? Are ordinary citizens who listen in to police frequencies engaged in “wiretapping?”
Wiretapping requires some phyiscal intrusion. If all the NSA is doing is collecting data from the airwaves or from internet connections to which public access is allowed – even if all this is encrypted – I don’t see how that would be “wiretapping.”
Ben Pugh (1527b3) — 12/23/2005 @ 12:48 pmI agree completely with Ben Pugh … not a wiretap … no lie told.
Jeff Crump (4c3c19) — 12/23/2005 @ 12:53 pmDon’t know the context of his remarks. If they were in regard to the Patriot Act then that is what he was talking about. The NSA intercepts are a different animal and don’t depend upon any part of the Patriot Act. They depend upon the President’s War Powers vested in him by the Consitution and in terms of wiretaps were first used by FDR against the Nazis. If interested, read The Return of George Sutherland, which treats a bit on those war powers.
leon dixon (8858b4) — 12/23/2005 @ 1:43 pmPatrick, you asked
I am certain that any intercepts the NSA does have nothing to do with what the average person understands to be a wiretap. The press displays a profound ignorance of SIGINT as it applies to the military.
As one of your writers above points out, the air is filled with signals. Capturing those and analyzing them is what the NSA does and has done for some time. That’s their charter. It has absolutely no relationship to the classic wiretap that actually taps a wire (either at a residence, a place of business or at the phone CO) to obtain conversations from it.
I can talk about it now, because the program has been declassified. The work that I did in the Navy had to do with capturing sound underwater using passive methods to obtain the sounds. By definition, we were “spying” on Americans because we picked up sounds from everything that was in, on or under the water, including American owned vessels (even including marine life.) But the point of our surveillance wasn’t to track Americans. It was to track anything that might be a threat to the country – regardless of the country of origin.
The NSA’s source and methods are highly classified and I never had access to them, but they almost certainly do not require “tapping” into anything. I’m certain that their methods are similar to ours – passive capture of signals.
The courts have ruled that the NSA has a legal right to provide to law enforcement a summary of any conversations it has captured that might be of interest in an investigatory capacity. The FBI (and other agencies) then must approach the FISA court for permission to tap – based upon the probable cause developed by the NSA and summarized in their report – to obtain warrants to do wiretaps that assist in developing a case against a terrorist or terrorist sympathizer.
If you read USSID 18, it’s very clear that NSA is not required to even notify the FISA court (which President Bush has chosen to do anyway) much less ask their permission to capture information.
If you read the President’s statement, which you quoted, and you understand SIGINT, he is clearly referring to a law enforcement function, not a military function, and it’s important that citizens understand the difference.
Some will argue that the military has no oversight and therefore should have to seek FISA’s permission, but that would be a violation of the Constitutional separation of powers. The check on the military is Congress’ power of the purse. If Congress thought what the NSA was doing was wrong, they would stop funding it. That they have not speaks volumes.
antimedia (8d822a) — 12/23/2005 @ 2:30 pmI agree with comment #18. Bush was referring to surveillance programs that the government talks about:
Technically, Bush was correct. Doubtless, he made the bad guys think that we have a really clunky and inefficient mechanism for listening in on their phone calls. Indeed we do have a clunky surveillance mechanism for phone calls that are entirely within the United States — and that is the mechanism that the United States government was free to “talk” about.
Patterico, you lib! 🙂
Andrew (08ba2c) — 12/23/2005 @ 3:14 pmI think the key in understanding ANY Bush comment is to understand first that he speaks simply and directly (sort of) at least that’s what I think he’s trying to do. The real world, unfortunately is full of “nuance” and exceptions that I’d argue he doesn’t generally consider, especially when offering talking points. I’d also argue that his world is pretty much “black and white” where we are arguing shades of grey here. One only need review his debate performances in each of his last two elections or pretty much any of his press conferences, to see my point.
Therefore, I’d assert that it’s relatively easy to catch him in a “lie” if that’s what you’re looking for and you parse his comments sufficiently rigorously. It just isn’t his communication style to get into all the messy details and multiple exceptions to ensure that he can’t be misunderstood. I just don’t believe you’ll generally get a comprehensive treatment of most subjects from Bush – it’s not his style. Does not seem to be his leadership style either, BTW.
This is why I opined on another thread here that when we get to this level of analysis we’re really engaged in “picking fly poop out of pepper” when we play this parsing game. Lot’s of fun to argue but not all that productive. Bush’s communications style is very Reganesque. Once you understand this point, you understand Bush. I believe this is why he has generally connected with the average American. He speaks just like we do.
Unfortunately, I don’t believe our friends on the left really understand what it means to “lie” or to be a “liar”. I’m honestly not sure they want to. It’s much more supportive of their preconceived notion that Bush is a bad guy and a “liar”. Of course I’m still trying to determine whether he’s an evil genius or a bumbling idiot. But that’s a subject for another day I suppose.
Merry Christmas to all of you and thanks, Pat, for your contribution to the social discourse.
Harry Arthur (b318a5) — 12/23/2005 @ 5:11 pmIn regards to Blachley Park and the need to maintain secrecy–During the Battle of Britain, the only thing standing in the way of the German bombing campaign was the RAF. Yet, it was so important to prevent the Germans from guessing that we could read their signals that Churchill made the decision to allow the Luftwaffe to bomb Coventry (the center of the British aircraft industry) without pre-positioning forces to defend it.
This underscores the tremendous importance of maintaining the secrecy of signals intelligence. People who think that the technology FISA was intended to monitor has any applicability to the methods used by the NSA aren’t living in a 9/10/01 world; they are living in an 11/3/79 world. Hell yes I’d lie to save thousands of American lives, once upon a time I was expected to give up my life for far less.
Patterico, seems to me its like the two blind men examining an elephant. You look at things from the standpoint of a lawyer. I look at things from the standpoint of a warrior. I do not approve of deception by our public officials in a purely domestic situation. However, deception (of the enemy) is an extremely important part of waging war. The (European) idea that war is gentlemanly, or can be constrained within a set of rules was put to rest in the American Revolution. People outside Europe have never been constrained by that particular illusion. I think it unfortunate that lawyers and politicians (is there a real difference these days) are not required to be as knowledgeable about Von Clausewitz, Machievielli, and Sun Tsu, as military personnel are required to know the Constitution, the UCMJ and various SOF agreements.
74 (4bdf43) — 12/23/2005 @ 6:35 pmOur sharp eyed Lefty friends say GWB lied, but can’t find an example that isn’t twisted beyond all recognition, or taken so far out of context as to approach the obviously absurd.
But when Bill Clinton went on national TV, wagged his finger in America’s face, and lied like a dog, these same eagle eyed Lefties must have been looking the other way.
Later, Clinton went before the Grand Jury, put his left hand on the Bible, raised his right hand and swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and again he lied like a dog.
When he was caught in his web of lies, like a rat in a trap, Bill Clinton, President of the US, quibbled over the meaning of the word, “is.” And, our Lefty pals don’t seem to see a problem. How convenient is that?
Black Jack (ee9fe2) — 12/23/2005 @ 6:58 pmQuite an intersting thread. I said in comment #2 that GWB was Clintonesque in his parsing of the word wiretap (i.e. a wiretap does not mean intercepting over the air signals). After reading through many of the insightful comments, it’s clear to me that was terribly unfair to our president. Bush parsed the word to confuse our enemies regarding our ability to intercept their transmissions in a timely manner. Clinton’s obfuscations were just to save his ass.
Jeff (428193) — 12/23/2005 @ 9:16 pmI’ll go further and say the latest NY Times report basically confirms my guess.
NSA apparently aggregated data of phone calls; time, duration, number called, originating number, etc. but did not listen in to the call itself. This data was apparently aggregated with various other data to find out relationships, patterns, and help identify Al Qaeda people, places, and things. All super secret and with the best minds. Phone companies were encouraged to route foreign calls through US switches just for this purpose. NOT listening in (volume I guess precluded that) but to find patterns. A massive game of “which of these is not like the other?”
The question arises if it is legal, because the NSA collects data (from friendly phone companies) but not the contents of the phone calls. It’s analogous to putting someone in the post office looking at mail being sent but never opening the envelopes and only caring about stuff that doesn’t “fit”. Legal yes or no? Not a lawyer so I don’t know.
I will say that Bletchley Park was critical to winning the Battle of the Atlantic, where the Nazi Wolfpack U-boats nearly starved Britain out of the war. ONLY by reading the messages sent by the German Admiralty in conjunction with downwards looking radar and improved sonar was the US Navy able to hunt down and destroy the U-boat fleet which they did starting in late spring 1943 with great efficiency. About 90% casualties for Doenitz’s fleet. Point being was that the decoding was needed, the other technology alone was not enough. In the same way the “Magic” intercepts let us read the Japanese codes and determine Midway was the target which led to our victory there and prevented a Hawaiian invasion certainly and likely a mainland bombing campaign. NSA was basically just the extensive signals intelligence of the Navy in the Pacific retooled.
My larger point is that Al Qaeda has NEVER fought anyone like us and can’t understand us. They know how to beat the Turks, Spaniards, Brits, Indians, and Jordanians despite their informers, spies, unfettered secret police, use of torture (which does work) and lots of surveillance. But they have never fought an enemy that brings whatever money, manpower, and technical brilliance is needed to find them and deliver a hellfire missile to them. By drone if need be. Largely by looking for anomalous patterns in massive data sets. No other country would even conceive of this, not even the Israelis. My guess is the basic approach is to find people who are NOT everday, ordinary students, workers, the like but hidden cells waiting to strike, by massive amounts of data analysis. Able Danger on steroids.
Is this legal? Hell if I know but from a layman’s perspective it looks like TRW credit reports or credit card fraud monitoring scaled up. It certainly seems to WORK.
Back to Bush, if this is what he’s referring to then there is technically I suppose a case that could be made that there’s no need for a warrant because there’s no wiretapping. Merely massive data analysis on aggregated data ala TRW.
Jim Rockford (e09923) — 12/23/2005 @ 11:41 pmSee my second update. The “there was no wiretapping” argument may well have merit. But I am not convinced by the “Bush lied to fool our enemies” argument.
For example, many have defended the provisions of the Patriot Act relating to libraries by arguing that the law has not been abused willy-nilly; indeed, it hasn’t been used at all. What if that is a flat lie as well? What if they have monitored the borrowings of thousands of library patrons? The argument would be: well, we wanted our enemies to feel comfortable getting books out of the library and knowing that we probably wouldn’t be monitoring them.
It’s always possible to rationalize lies on grounds like this, but I think it’s a terribly slippery slope. Especially in a context where he wasn’t being asked a question, and could have simply kept his mouth shut, it strikes me as dishonest and indefensible — again, assuming wiretapping was involved. I think *that’s* the real issue.
Patterico (d06191) — 12/24/2005 @ 9:26 amPatrick, are you aware that the words “library” and “libraries” appear nowhere in the Patriot Act? That is purely a construct of the anti-Patriot Act crowd. There is nothing in the Patriot Act that authorizes the monitoring of libraries or the books someone checks out or anything like that.
In the course of an investigation, supported by a court ordered warrant, it’s entirely possible that someone could be surveilled in a library or their list of checked out books be examined, but that power already exists under a court-ordered warrant.
WRT what Bush said (the point of this entire post), I take him to be referring to legitimate, court-authorized wiretapping within the US. I don’t think he was trying to fool the enemy or anybody else. He gave a straightforward explanation of wiretapping in the context of law enforcement activities.
Again, folks really need to mentally separate law enforcement activities from military activities. NSA has no power to investigate or arrest anyone, foreign or domestic. Their charter is signals intelligence only. The danger comes when the NSA provides its information to law enforcement to be used against US citizens, and the law specifically addresses that.
The NSA is prohibited from providing anything other than a summary of the activity they have detected to law enforcement. It it then up to law enforcement to go to the FISA court and obtain the necessary permissions to pursue an investigation and possible indictments.
In fact, courts have commented that the very idea of getting a warrant before surveilling a foreign person or a US citizen residing in or visiting a foreign country is silly because US laws do not apply to them when they are in a foreign country and many countries would not honor or even recognize a US warrant for such activities.
But I don’t think the President lied, nor do I think that he tried to mislead anyone (even our enemies.) He told the truth.
Note that, in the transcript, he says
The context is the Patriot Act and law enforcement action, not NSA and foreign SIGINT. I simply can’t stress this enough. The NSA is not a law enforcement agency. It’s a military agency.
antimedia (8d822a) — 12/24/2005 @ 12:43 pmI’d like to supplement my comment #40 a little bit. Here’s the full paragraph in question, which no one has yet quoted in full here:
As mentioned at comments #15 and #47, Bush may well have been referring only to roving wiretaps, and I don’t think the NSA has obtained ANY roving wiretaps in the U.S. without a warrant.
Patterico, why weren’t you accusing Bush of lying the day after he made the speech in question? After all, consider this sentence from the paragraph in question: “When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so.” Everyone knows that police chase down terrorists and all kinds of other criminals without first getting a warrant. So was Bush lying about that too? Or was he just talking about roving wiretaps?
Andrew (08ba2c) — 12/24/2005 @ 1:20 pmAndrew I doubt the NSA would even bother with roving wiretaps in the US. They’d simply provide the FBI counterintelligence and counterterrorism folks with a summary and hand the whole thing off to them. They don’t do LE investigations.
antimedia (8d822a) — 12/24/2005 @ 4:26 pmI’m not saying that the President lied specifically to plant information for Al Qaeda, but every time public officials say something to the media, they need to understand that their remarks are going to be parsed not only by the domestic audience, but by our enemys as well. You don’t want to be handing useful intelligence to the bad guys by not keeping a tight grip on your yap. The MSM folks seem to be so wrapped up in their mission to get to the bottom of everything, that they don’t understand that government officials MIGHT have other reasons for not being completely forthcoming. People outside the intelligence community have no idea of the kind of information that can be obtained by fitting together lots of little bits that are seemingly innocuous in and of themselves.
74 (4bdf43) — 12/24/2005 @ 4:58 pm