Again. If you are talking to Al Qaeda I want to know about it. Warrants be damned - you have NO right to privacy when plotting the killing of my fellow country men-period.
Highlighted points of the document:
"In reliance on these principles, a consistent understanding has developed that the President has inherent constitutional authority to conduct warrantless searches and surveillance within the United States for foreign intelligence purposes. Wiretaps for such purposes thus have been authorized by Presidents at least since the administration of Franklin Roosevelt in 1940. See, e.g., United States v. United States District Court, 444 F.2d 651, 669-71 (6th Cir. 1971) (reproducing as an appendix memoranda from Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, and Johnson). In a Memorandum to Attorney General Jackson, President Roosevelt wrote on May 21, 1940:
You are, therefore, authorized and directed in such cases as you may approve, after investigation of the need in each case, to authorize the necessary investigation agents that they are at liberty to secure information by listening devices directed to the conversation or other communications of persons suspected of subversive activities against the Government of the United States, including suspected spies. You are requested furthermore to limit these investigations so conducted to a minimum and limit them insofar as possible to aliens.
Id. at 670 (appendix A). President Truman approved a memorandum drafted by Attorney General Tom Clark in which the Attorney General advised that “it is as necessary as it was in 1940 to take the investigative measures” authorized by President Roosevelt to conduct electronic surveillance “in cases vitally affecting the domestic security.” Id. Indeed, while FISA was being debated during the Carter Administration, Attorney General Griffin Bell testified that “the current bill recognizes no inherent power of the President to conduct electronic surveillance, and I want to interpolate here to say that this does not take away the power [of] the President under the Constitution.” Foreign Intelligence Electronic Surveillance Act of 1978: Hearings on H.R. 5764, H.R. 9745, H.R. 7308, and H.R. 5632 Before the Subcomm. on Legislation of the House Comm. on Intelligence, 95th Cong., 2d Sess. 15 (1978) (emphasis added); see also Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 363 (1967) (White, J., concurring) (“Wiretapping to protect the security of the Nation has been authorized by successive Presidents.”); cf. Amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act: Hearings Before the House Permanent Select Comm. on Intelligence,103d Cong. 2d Sess. 61 (1994) (statement of Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick) (“[T]he Department of Justice believes, and the case law supports, that the President has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes . . . .”).
The document then goes on to show that Courts over the last sixty years have backed this authority. Liberals will no doubt country that "Bush's war" with Iraq is "illegal", whereas WWII was a legal war. But for those of us of reasonable intelligence beyond that of a cabbage, will know that is incorrect.
Fact is that the program is both legal and necessary to protect our National Security.
More at JAWA Report, AJ Strata
iraq Politics News murtha Able Danger Curt Weldon bush war on terror spying patriot act nsa CIA jonathan alter leak krugman
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