Lawyers said Bush couldn’t spy on Americans. He did it anyway.
MORE ON BUSH SPYING ON AMERICANS WHEN IT WAS CONSIDERED lLLEGAL!
SNOWDEN DOCUMENT shows BUSH 1st TERM FAUGHT FOR QUESTlONABLE JUSTlFlCATlON TO COLLECT META DATA ON AMERICANS IN 2002.
Process = GOV lawyers, judges + Private lawyers who believed Bush stepped over legal line
NSA Sept 14, 2001 targeted communications between US and Afghanistan
CHAINY asked NSA’s Hayden to do MORE!
NSA found FISA process too cumbersome but rather than asking Congress to amend FISA:
Oct 4, 2001 Bush took the law into his own hands and gave NSA broad authority to intercept telephone and Internet communications if at least one party to the communication was located outside the United States.
Addington drafted the BUSH LAW BREAKING document defending the legality of wiretapping based on Bush’s Authorization.
BUSH refused 2 NSA lawyer requests to see this document
Addington did “read a few paragraphs of the opinion” over the phone to NSA’s Deitz.
NSA’s inspector general found it “strange that NSA was told to execute a secret program that everyone knew presented legal questions, without being told the underpinning legal theory.”
NSA surveillance required private-sector telecommunications companies and 4 firms readily agreed.
3 refused the idea of violating their customers’ privacy without a court order.
BUSH bypassed FISA Court 3 MONTHS until Jan. 31, 2002.
March 2004, DOJ said one part of the NSA’s surveillance program “was prohibited by the terms of FISA and Title III.”
March 11, 2002 BUSH had the White House Counsel sign an Authorization for the program, instead of the Attorney General, on March 11 – BYPASSING DOJ
March 19, 2002 8 Days later BUSH changed his mind and ordered the collection of bulk Internet metadata halted.
3 surveillance programs on telephone metadata and the content of phone calls and Internet communications — were allowed to continue after March 2004.
July 2002 Bush resumed META DATA COLLECTION after convincing Judge Kotelly to sign off on a new legal justification for the program.
DOJ said new legal foundations for these programs were needed and “DOJ and NSA needed to find a legal theory that would allow NSA (to continue) NSA had serious reservations about whether it would be possible to find a workable solution using a FISC order at that time.”
In 18 Months DOJ lawyers finally found a solution that FISC accepted and grant a court order for permission to intercept the communications of thousands of people with a single FISA order on foreign targets.
FISA rejected this for targeting Americans, forcing the government to begin seeking conventional FISA orders to intercept Americans’ international communications.
Opponents of Bush’s surveillance programs have still not had an opportunity to challenge them in court.
The sheer number of people, including company lawyers, (EVEN) DOJ lawyers, and the FISC itself, suggests the Bush-era spying programs were on shaky legal ground.
THE BUSH White House had stepped over the line.
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