Present Day Prophets

In early July 2008, The US senate followed the House of Representatives in passing a controversial bill revising the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act [“FISA”] that contained a provision granting retroactive immunity to telecom companies that turned over information about private telephone conversations at the request of the White House and other government agencies.

Three proposed amendments sought to strip the immunity provision, or at least to delay immunity until more actual information was available about the nature and extent of abuses that occurred and were being effectively legalized, all were defeated. GOP Senator Arlen Specter proposed to invalidate the immunity if the NSA program were judged to be unconstitutional, hardly an unreasonable position. His amendment was defeated 37-61. What this means is that at least a dozen Democrats chose to support the President’s wiretapping program and grant immunity to the telecom companies even if their conduct was proven unconstitutional in a court of law.

Sen. Russ Feingold [D-Wis.] stated on the Senate floor that he, as a member of the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary Committees, had been briefed on the FISA and NSA programs and had as much information as the White House was willing to disclose. Based upon his current knowledge, he warned the senators:
"Mr. President, I sit on the Intelligence and Judiciary committees, and I am one of the few members of this body who has been fully briefed on the warrantless wiretapping program. And, based on what I know, I can promise that if more information is declassified about the program in the future, as is likely to happen either due to the Inspector General report, the election of a new president, or simply the passage of time, members of this body will regret that we passed this legislation."

Flash forward to mid-August 2008, after the bill granting immunity has been passed and signed. The telecoms have been granted a “get out of jail free card,” and now information sought by the proponents of amendments to delay or eliminate blanket immunity begins to surface. The FBI publicly announced that it had improperly obtained the records of confidential phone conversations of journalists from the Washington Post and the New York Times. These conversations were turned over by the telecoms in response to blanket requests by the FBI under the NSA that evaded the congressionally approved procedures that were designed to prevent just such abuses.

Only time or a change of leadership will more fully reveal, as suggested by Senator Feingold, the extent of the abuses under the domestic wiretapping program of the George W. Bush administration.

The Congress tried to justify passage on the earlier FISA revision legislation granting immunity based, in part, upon the more than 40 lawsuits pending against the telecoms. However, Congress seemed to ignore the fact that those lawsuits were largely a result of the refusal of the Bush Administration to disclose information about the operation of the NSA program and to conduct any credible investigation to determine the level of abuses that were occurring. To date, there is still no credible factual basis for believing that the NSA program is effective in reducing the threat of terrorist attacks in the US. That is the supposed justification for the infringement on the fundamental Constitutional Rights that the President’s NSA program asserts. [ As Feingold and others noted, however, the President’s domestic wiretapping program began prior to the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center.]

Instead, the information that is slowly surfacing lends sadly prophetic credence to the warning by Sen. Feingold that subsequent revelations would show that granting immunity to anyone involved in the domestic wiretapping program that circumvents judicial and congressional oversight was a grave error. Most prophets are not appreciated until after they are dead. Let us hope that someone will take greater heed of the warnings and advice of knowledgeable Senators like Feingold and Specter while they are still able to help us protect the fundamental freedoms the country was founded upon.