Senator Pat Roberts and the Republican Cover-Up
17 February 2006 9:00 am by Taylor Marsh
Senator Pat Roberts and the Republican Cover-Up
Welcome to the other cover-up, ladies and gentlemen. The one where the Republicans who control Congress decide to hide the fact that President Bush illegally spied on Americans. I know, it's hard to keep the Bush-Cheney butt covering straight.
Is there any aspect of President Bush's miserable record on intelligence
that Senator Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is
not willing to excuse and help to cover up? Doing
the President's Dirty Work
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After watching Senator Roberts on “Meet
the Press” last Sunday, the answer to the above question is clearly
no. Stuttering and stammering, holding up “memory pills,” he was nothing
short of a doddering fool. However, then the gun shot that was heard around
the world rang out, giving Roberts cover for his crotchety, cranky collapse
on anything bearing witness to the truth.
But what he's recently done defies all imaginings. He is going
to work with the White House to amend FISA so that there will not have to be
hearings. In other words, he knows Bush's illegal warrantless wiretaps cannot
see the light of day because if they do only one thing will happen. People will
find out that President Bush has broken the law numerous times, committing what
is obviously an impeachable offense.
Meanwhile, over in the House, Rep.
Heather Wilson is in a political fight with the ineffectual and conveniently
spineless Hoekstra over hearings they agreed to. Hoekstra's office says, “This
is not an inquiry into the program.” Wonderful.
The Republicans who control Congress don't want the truth – they
can't handle it. So, in a collective cover-up of both sides of Congress, they're
going to let Bush's illegal wiretapping program slip into the darkness of the
back room. Seriously, people, what good is Congress anymore? They're afraid
of Bush, afraid of Dick Cheney, even after he shot a man under the influence.
Instead of holding the committee vote on a hearing, after the
Wilson – Hoekstra disagreement, Roberts used that event to cancel the vote
so he could get busy on the cover-up and protect the president and vice president
from their illegal spying. Roberts just adjourned the meeting and said they'd
meet again on March 7.
As for Senator Specter and Rep. Harman's idea of bringing the
program under FISA, that's not going to wash with the White House either.
The White House is unlikely to agree to
bring the wiretapping under the scope of the FISA court, as most Democrats
and some Republicans want. Instead, the administration appears interested
in a proposal by Senator Mike DeWine, Republican of Ohio, that would explicitly
authorize the wiretapping, without court warrants, but create small Congressional
subcommittees to oversee it. New
York Times
But as Specter said later, first we've got
to establish the constitutionality of Bush's illegal wiretapping. “Window
dressing” will not be enough, said Specter.
According to the Senator Jay Rockefeller, the Democratic co-chair,
the White House has stiffed them. They won't even share how the NSA illegal
wiretapping works, how it is monitored, the type of information that is collected,
how much information is collected, not to mention where the collected info is
stored. Of course, we still don't know how it's used, or for that matter, who
got caught in Bush's illegal dragnet.
Senator Pat Roberts couldn't care less. He's got one job and it's
not protect the presidency or this country. His one and only concern is to protect
this Republican president and everyone around him, especially Dick Cheney, who
even Alberto Gonzales said is the “expert” on all things spying. I
bet.
Of course, the wingnuts are all crying that Bush needs more than
FISA at a time of war, with Democrats worried about facing down the president
and vice president because they may look soft. The thing is that FISA was intended
to cover wiretaps in times of war, which Glenn
Greenwald makes clear in his post today. The following is a snippet from
FISA.
Notwithstanding any other law, the President,
through the Attorney General, may authorize electronic surveillance without
a court order under this subchapter to acquire foreign intelligence information
for a period not to exceed fifteen calendar days following a declaration of
war by the Congress.
Senator Roberts and the Republicans are simply trying to cover-up
the fact that Bush illegally wiretapped by trying to divert attention from something
that is really simple. FISA allows Bush and Cheney to do all the wiretapping
they want, as long as they go to the FISA court first, or within 72 hours. Even
Rep. Harman said the president's currently illegal program, if brought within
FISA, would likely be legal. In other words, if Bush decided to allow oversight
by the FISA court we wouldn't even be having this discussion because he wouldn't
have broken the law in the first place.
That's what Senator Pat Roberts is trying to cover-up.
I'll let today's New York Times editorial take us out.
… and (Senator Pat Roberts) said
he and the White House were working out “a fix” for the law. That
is the worst news. FISA was written to prevent the president from violating
Americans' constitutional rights. It was amended after 9/11 to make it even
easier for the administration to do legally what it is now doing.FISA does not in any way prevent Mr. Bush from spying
on Qaeda members or other terrorists. The last thing the nation needs is to
amend the law to institutionalize the imperial powers Mr. Bush seized after
9/11.
