As congressional hearings on the legality of the Bush administration’s eavesdropping program get under way today, a substantial debate is taking place in the blogosphere over a splashy Washington Post Sunday story that painted a much fuller picture of the program’s scope than had previously been reported.
“Intelligence officers who eavesdropped on thousands of Americans in overseas calls under authority from President Bush have dismissed nearly all of them as potential suspects after hearing nothing pertinent to a terrorist threat, according to accounts from current and former government officials and private-sector sources with knowledge of the technologies in use,” wrote the Post.
According to two knowledgeable sources who talked to the paper, thousands of Americans have had their communications monitored by intelligence analysts without court authority in the past four years — yet “[f]ewer than 10 U.S. citizens or residents a year, according to an authoritative account, have aroused enough suspicion during warrantless eavesdropping to justify interception of their domestic calls.”
And with that and the story’s many other detailed findings, bloggers were off to the races.
Pointing out that the spying program’s wiretap yield was much lower than the conventional legal standard (of one in two wiretaps) needed to show probable cause, Some Bits wrote, “Now it’s clear why the Bush Administration knowingly violated the law; they couldn’t meet its requirements. It’s good to be the king. I know we’re all suffering outrage fatigue here, but this extension of executive power is a serious threat to orderly U.S. government. It has to be stopped.”
Over at Think Progress, Nico also advocated keeping the pressure on. “Multiple news reports have shown that the program was used to spy on thousands of innocent Americans with no ties to al Qaeda, and the Bush administration has been caught spying on political opponents on multiple occasions,” chimed in the blogger. “Bush officials cannot be allowed to spin this question. The burden is on them to show that the program has not been used to spy on journalists or political opponents.”
Meantime, after rebutting the “whole passel of excuses” the administration has used to justify the secret program, Grouchy’s Liberaltopia had some fun with the whole thing:
[I]t’s ludicrous to think that al Qaeda would send real terrorist orders by cell phone or via email. Does anyone really believe they intercepted something like the following:
Hey Hassan,
Tomorrow rent a truck from Budget, fill it with explosives and go blow up the Brooklyn Bridge at 3:00pm sharp.
BTW, DON’T go to Budget and try to get your deposit back afterwards, OK?
My best to the wife and kids.
Osama
Slightly more intriguing responses came from Web scribes who responded to the Post story by defending the spying program.
“Much will be made of the charge in the Washington Post yesterday that ‘only’ 10 or 20 terrorist suspects were caught in the NSA digital dragnet while 5,000 or so American citizens had snippets of their communications looked at by NSA analysts,” wrote Rick Moran at Right Wing Nut House in an incisive, funny preview of the congressional hearings. “I really hope the Democrats take this tack because it will highlight the fact that the program actually works. Those are 10 or 20 terrorist suspects that we didn’t know about before.”
“[I]n the end, there is no alternative but to trust the president that what he’s doing is right,” Moran continued. “But unless we want our intelligence secrets plastered all over the front pages of the world’s newspapers (or at least more than they are already), no definitive word can emerge that will allow us to judge the efficacy of the program.”
Fore Left! was thinking along similar lines. While noting that the Post “story seems to leave the impression the program might be overdone at best and a failure at worse,” he argued that “Catching just one [terrorist] might be a success in the eyes of those spared an attack.”
“There’s just something unsettling about an article like this,” commented the conservative blogger from “lovely Left Tennessee.” “Assuming it wasn’t a clever misdirection, it seemed to merrily hop along through the secret details as if discussing Social Security reform. In past wars Americans have seemingly understood the need for a degree of stealth regards our tactics, but stories like this point out the present disconnect. It’s pretty simple to understand — approximately a third of the country thinks the real enemy resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”
Edward B. Colby was a writer at CJR Daily.