Bush Attorney General Refused to OK Wiretaps

The President continues to insist that warrantless spying on Americans may be illegal for everyone else, but it's perfectly OK if you're the President.

Bush protestations even persuaded General Colin Powell, the former Secretary of State who delivered discredited UN testimony on WMDs, to tell ABC's This Week that "I see absolutely nothing wrong with the president authorizing these kinds of actions."

Bush Administration attorneys, however, firmly disagreed with Army General Powell. The New York Times reported in December 2005 that the National Security Agency has been conducting warrantless surveillance of Americans since 2002, entirely without legally-mandated judicial permission or oversight, even though the US Attorney General balked at Bush's approval request for warrantless wiretapping and the like.

Blogger and journalist Joe Gandelman of The Moderate Voice points out that, on the contrary, the Bush Administration clearly realized that warrantless wiretapping was a major legal problem:

"Newsweek adds a new troubling twist to the controversy over the Bush administration's warrantless spying. It reports that even then-Attorney General John Ashcroft would not authorize the spying sought by the administration:

On one day in the spring of 2004, White House chief of staff Andy Card and the then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales made a bedside visit to John Ashcroft, attorney general at the time, who was stricken with a rare and painful pancreatic disease, to try—without success—to get him to reverse his deputy, Acting Attorney General James Comey, who was balking at the warrantless eavesdropping....

Miffed that Comey, a straitlaced, by-the-book former U.S. attorney from New York, was not a "team player" on this and other issues, President George W. Bush dubbed him with a derisive nickname, "Cuomo," after Mario Cuomo, the New York governor who vacillated over running for president in the 1980s....

There's a few things troubling in this paragraph from a piece that tries to present both sides (see below):

(1) Because Comey wouldn't go along with the President's desires he was basically labeled by the President a Democrat within his heart. So, if you don't agree with everything the President says you MUST be a closet Democrat?

(2) It's clear it was no dice when the Bush administration went to James Comey so the administration tried to end-run him and go higher up.

(3) When even its ATTORNEY GENERAL REFUSED, the administration then did what what it sought to do anyway...without going to a court.

If this was so justified in doing as warrantless wiretaps, then, why did they bother to go to Comey or Ashcroft in the first place? "

Be sure to read the rest of Joe's reasoned post. He makes additional fascinating, cogent points.
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Two quotes from mid-December, when Bush warrantless spying was first disclosed by the Times, still best sum it up.....

"The law is very clear that a person is guilty of an offense unless they get a court order before seeking to wiretap an American citizen. Why did the president not get a court order? "

-----Moderator Tim Russert on NBC's Meet the Press, December 18, 2005

"The President believes that he has the power to override the laws that Congress has passed. This is not how our democratic system of government works. The President does not get to pick and choose which laws he wants to follow. He is a president, not a king."

----- Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI), December 17, 2005
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