BS: Spying, Secrecy, and Presidential Power

Subject: RE: BS: Spying, Secrecy, and Presidential Power
From: Don Firth
Date: 22 Oct 06 - 05:28 PM

And as far as Clinton's military cut-backs are concerned, this was perfectly consistent with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fact that until Bush started shooting his mouth off about "axis of evil," no other nation constituted any kind of threat. There was the threat of terrorist activity, which Clinton was aware of and tried to warn the incoming Bush administration about, but they didn't want to hear it.

Clinton knew, as Bush does not, that an international terrorist organization like al Qaeda would have to be handled through intelligence agencies, international cooperation, and surgical strikes against the terrorist organizations themselves. Invading another country that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack is just about the stupidest thing this country could have done. Guaranteed to increase the problem.

We wouldn't need a huge military had it not been for Bush's arrogance and incompetence, aided and abetted by blunderers like Rumsfeld and Rice, not to mention war-profiteers like Cheney's friends and business associates (no-bid contracts to Halliburton).

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Spying, Secrecy, and Presidential Power
From: Old Guy
Date: 23 Oct 06 - 08:42 PM

The first thing FDR did was to convene a special session of Congress where he introduced a bill amending the War Powers Act to remove the clause excluding American citizens from being bound by its effects. This would allow the President to declare “national emergenciesâ€쳌 and unilaterally intact laws to deal with them.

Subject: RE: BS: Spying, Secrecy, and Presidential Power
From: Old Guy
Date: 23 Oct 06 - 08:47 PM

Permitting the interment of Japanese Americans during WWII
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, representatives of the western states pressed Congress and President Franklin D. Roosevelt to have Japanese Americas removed from the west coast. When the Department of Justice objected on constitutional and ethical grounds, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order No. 9066 and directed the U.S. Army to conduct the transportation of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans to interment camps. Most of these individuals were either U.S. citizens, or had permanent resident alien status. They were detained for up to 4 years without due process of law or ever being presented with any factual evidence against them. The following is the text of Executive Order No. 9066:

Executive Order No. 9066

The President

Executive Order

Authorizing the Secretary of War to Prescribe Military Areas

Whereas the successful prosecution of the war requires every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage to national-defense material, national-defense premises, and national-defense utilities as defined in Section 4, Act of April 20, 1918, 40 Stat. 533, as amended by the Act of November 30, 1940, 54 Stat. 1220, and the Act of August 21, 1941, 55 Stat. 655 (U.S.C., Title 50, Sec. 104),

Now, therefore, by virtue of the authority vested in me as President of the United States, and Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, I hereby authorize and direct the Secretary of War, and the Military Commanders whom he may from time to time designate, whenever he or any designated Commander deems such action necessary or desirable, to prescribe military areas in such places and of such extent as he or the appropriate Military Commander may determine, from which any or all persons may be excluded, and with respect to which, the right of any person to enter, remain in, or leave shall be subject to whatever restrictions the Secretary of War or the appropriate Military Commander may impose in his discretion. The Secretary of War is hereby authorized to provide for residents of any such area who are excluded therefrom, such transportation, food, shelter, and other accommodations as may be necessary, in the judgment of the Secretary of War or the said Military Commander, and until other arrangements are made, to accomplish the purpose of this order. The designation of military areas in any region or locality shall supersede designations of prohibited and restricted areas by the Attorney General under the Proclamations of December 7 and 8, 1941, and shall supersede the responsibility and authority of the Attorney General under the said Proclamations in respect of such prohibited and restricted areas.

I hereby further authorize and direct the Secretary of War and the said Military Commanders to take such other steps as he or the appropriate Military Commander may deem advisable to enforce compliance with the restrictions applicable to each Military area hereinabove authorized to be designated, including the use of Federal troops and other Federal Agencies, with authority to accept assistance of state and local agencies.

I hereby further authorize and direct all Executive Departments, independent establishments and other Federal Agencies, to assist the Secretary of War or the said Military Commanders in carrying out this Executive Order, including the furnishing of medical aid, hospitalization, food, clothing, transportation, use of land, shelter, and other supplies, equipment, utilities, facilities, and services.

This order shall not be construed as modifying or limiting in any way the authority heretofore granted under Executive Order No. 8972, dated December 12, 1941, nor shall it be construed as limiting or modifying the duty and responsibility of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, with respect to the investigation of alleged acts of sabotage or the duty and responsibility of the Attorney General and the Department of Justice under the Proclamations of December 7 and 8, 1941, prescribing regulations for the conduct and control of alien enemies, except as such duty and responsibility is superseded by the designation of military areas hereunder.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

The White House,

February 19, 1942.

Subject: RE: BS: Spying, Secrecy, and Presidential Power
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 23 Oct 06 - 09:12 PM

Yup, and Ronald Reagan belated apologized on behalf of the US Government.

Subject: RE: BS: Spying, Secrecy, and Presidential Power
From: Old Guy
Date: 23 Oct 06 - 09:13 PM

Kosovo:
"...Mr. Clinton is overriding major concerns of senior Pentagon officials that the administration has no clear-cut military goals and that this will soon involve twice as many U.S. troops as he predicts. They believe this will seriously overburden U.S. ground forces already committed to missions in the Persian Gulf, Bosnia and Korea...."

..."If Republicans allow Mr. Clinton to go ahead with his unconstitutional, costly, foolish and dangerous expedition to Kosovo, where we have no national security interest, they are forfeiting any claim to lead America..."


Excerpted from Howard Phillips Issues and Strategy Bulletin of February 28, 1998

Subject: RE: BS: Spying, Secrecy, and Presidential Power
From: GUEST,TIA
Date: 23 Oct 06 - 09:21 PM

Clinton and crybabies
Clinton and crybabies
Clinton and crybabies
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Subject: RE: BS: Spying, Secrecy, and Presidential Power
From: Old Guy
Date: 23 Oct 06 - 09:36 PM

Do these facts that echo the present state of affairs bring tears to your eyes?

Subject: RE: BS: Spying, Secrecy, and Presidential Power
From: Old Guy
Date: 23 Oct 06 - 09:44 PM

"...Mr. Clinton said he is weighing a proposal from the Defense Department to establish a commander in chief for the defense of the continental United States, a step that civil liberties groups strongly resist...."

"...Such a program would go far beyond the civil defense measures and bomb shelters that marked the cold war, setting up instead a military leadership to help fight chaos and disarray if an attack occurred. Pentagon commanders oversee regions around the globe, but not the continental United States."

"...Critics fear such moves could open the door to rising military influence and a loss of individual rights, but Mr. Clinton insisted that such erosions would never occur....Congress has usually supported White House efforts to fight terrorism...."

"...But civil libertarians and some Administration officials fear that such military power could slowly expand to threaten the privacy, liberty and lives of private citizens. Defenders of the plan, including Pentagon officials, insist that it would do no such thing and that the nation needed homeland defense to deal with terrorists armed with deadly germs, chemicals and skills for attacking the nation's key computer networks...."

"...a senior Pentagon official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, warned that a major terrorist attack had the potential to be ‘the most threatening event to civil liberties since Pearl Harbor.’..."


Excerpted from Howard Phillips Issues and Strategy Bulletin of January 31, 1999

Subject: RE: BS: Spying, Secrecy, and Presidential Power
From: Don Firth
Date: 23 Oct 06 - 09:48 PM

No, Old Guy, but you're scoring very high on the yawn-meter.

You try to justify Bush's incompetence by pointing at historical precedents. Haven't you ever heard the proverb, "Those who will not learn from history are doomed to repeat it?"

Do you have any solution for the mess the country is in now, or is trying to exonerate Bush as the country goes into the tank all you've got?

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Spying, Secrecy, and Presidential Power
From: Old Guy
Date: 23 Oct 06 - 10:24 PM

LEGAL AUTHORITIES SUPPORTING THE ACTIVITIES OF THE
NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY DESCRIBED BY THE PRESIDENT

"The Department of Justice believes, and the case law supports, that the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes," Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on July 14, 1994, "and that the President may, as has been done, delegate this authority to the Attorney General."

...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) “The Department of Justice believes, and the case law supports, that the President has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes â€쳌...

...The courts uniformly have approved this longstanding Executive Branch practice. Indeed, every federal appellate court to rule on the question has concluded that, even in peacetime, the President has inherent constitutional authority, consistent with the Fourth
Amendment, to conduct searches for foreign intelligence purposes without securing a judicial warrant...

..All the other courts to have decided the issue have held that the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information...

...We take for granted that the President does have that authority and, assuming that is so, FISA could not encroach on the President’s constitutional power.â€쳌...

...From a constitutional standpoint, foreign intelligence surveillance such as the NSA activities differs fundamentally from the domestic security surveillance at issue...

...As the Fourth Circuit observed, the President has uniquely strong constitutional powers in matters pertaining to foreign affairs and national security. “Perhaps most crucially, the executive branch
not only has superior expertise in the area of foreign intelligence, it is also constitutionally designated as the pre-eminent authority in foreign affairs.â€쳌 ...

... The present circumstances that support recognition of the President’s inherent constitutional authority to conduct the NSA activities are considerably stronger than were the circumstances at issue in the earlier courts of appeals cases that recognized this power. ...

...Among the President’s most basic constitutional duties is the duty to protect the Nation from armed attack. The Constitution gives him all necessary authority to fulfill that responsibility....

...It is important to understand that the rules and methodology for criminal searches are inconsistent with the collection of foreign intelligence and would unduly frustrate the President in carrying
out his foreign intelligence responsibilities...

...We believe that the warrant clause of the Fourth Amendment is inapplicable to such foreign intelligence searches.â€쳌); see also In re
Sealed Case, 310 F.3d 745. The object of foreign intelligence collection is securing information necessary to protect the national security from the hostile designs of foreign powers like al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist organizations, including the possibility of another foreign attack on the United States. In foreign intelligence investigations, moreover, the targets of surveillance often are agents of foreign powers, including international terrorist groups, who may be specially trained in concealing their activities and whose activities may be particularly difficult to detect.
The Executive requires a greater degree of flexibility in this field to respond with speed and absolute secrecy to the ever-changing array of foreign threats faced by the Nation.
In particular, the NSA activities are undertaken to prevent further devastating attacks on our Nation, and they serve the highest government purpose through means other than traditional law enforcement. The NSA activities are designed to enable the Government to act quickly and flexibly (and with secrecy) to find agents of al Qaeda and its affiliates an international terrorist group which has already demonstrated a capability to infiltrate American communities
without being detectedâ€"in time to disrupt future terrorist attacks against the United States. As explained by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, the nature of the “emergencyâ€쳌 posed by al Qaeda “takes the matter out of the realm of ordinary crime control.â€쳌 In re Sealed Case, 310 F.3d at 746. Thus, under the “special needsâ€쳌 doctrine, no warrant is required by the Fourth Amendment for the NSA activities...

Exerpted from U.S. Department of Justice
Washington, D.C. 20530
January 19, 2006
http://fl1.findlaw.com/news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/nsa/dojnsa11906wp.pdf

Subject: RE: BS: Spying, Secrecy, and Presidential Power
From: TIA
Date: 23 Oct 06 - 10:29 PM

What Don said.

This thread is dead. No new information, and no hope of a reasoned response.

Buh-bye.

Subject: RE: BS: Spying, Secrecy, and Presidential Power
From: Old Guy
Date: 23 Oct 06 - 11:01 PM

You don't mind talking about the precedents when it suits you does it?

So long.

Subject: RE: BS: Spying, Secrecy, and Presidential Power
From: Old Guy
Date: 24 Oct 06 - 12:45 AM

"Founding Fathers are clawin' at their coffin lids tryin' to get out and scream, "This ain't what we had in mind!!!""

Well, they never had the internet or telecomincations in mind either. Could they have forseen that some maniac in Pakistan could email plans to blow up a building, coordiante the various operatives and wire them money? Forge passports? Stuff nukes in freight containers? Foment Jihad over the internet?

Maybe if they had known they could have given is some protection from that stuff.

Besides, like Amos said, that is ancient history. What matters is what is happening right now. So maybe we should forget sbout what the founding fathers left out because they couldn't see future technology, deal with the present situation and do whatever is necessary.

Or maybe Bobert is willing to break the "Ancient History" taboo and tell us what they had in mind about how to deal with these things.

Subject: RE: BS: Spying, Secrecy, and Presidential Power
From: Barry Finn
Date: 24 Oct 06 - 01:02 AM

They tried to afford all the protection they could & up till now they did a damn fine job of it too.

Barry

Subject: RE: BS: Spying, Secrecy, and Presidential Power
From: Old Guy
Date: 24 Oct 06 - 09:26 AM

Yes sir, they did. And as you can see by reading their blueprints, they left foreign policy and national security to the discretion of the President.