In its article on the NSA, the Washington Post extensively quotes Kate Martin, the director of the Center for National Security Studies (CNSS), who said that Bush’s secret order may amount to the president authorizing criminal activity.
This is as shocking a revelation as we have ever seen from the Bush administration. It is, I believe, the first time a president has authorized government agencies to violate a specific criminal prohibition and eavesdrop on Americans.
To see where Ms. Martin is coming from, I decided to visit the CNSS website. Here’s what I found:
- A suit filed on December 6, 2001 against the Department of Justice seeking “the immediate disclosure of government documents concerning more than 1,000 individuals who have been arrested and detained in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attack.”
- An amicus brief filed in behalf of Jose Padilla.
- An amicus brief filed in behalf of Zacarias Moussaoui.
- An article by Ms. Martin asserting that “The Department of Justice’s insistence that legal barriers were responsible for the pre-9/11 intelligence failures is misleading at best and a distraction from the real intelligence failures at worst.”
The only other person quoted in the article is Caroline Fredrickson, director of the Washington legislative office of the American Civil Liberties Union, who said she was “dismayed” by the report.
Not exactly balanced reporting.
You want balance? Communism = Patriotism. All these good folk are doing their level best to undo the damage wrought by that traitor Whittaker Chambers and his ilk.