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There has been a much deserved furor in the press about the NSA data mining story broken by USA Today, but if past outrages are any guide, it will slowly subside and pass away, to
our lasting shame. There will be congressional hearings, where all we will hear is the administration line on how they think this is all for the national good, and lawful as they see it. There will be questions from
a few dogged Democratic senators, quickly covered by comforting comments by their Republican counterparts. Hayden will be approved, and on we go to the next outrage, like Presidential power assigned to Intelligence
Czar Negroponte to exempt corporations complicit with secret government programs from SEC reporting requirements. Nothing will substantially change to stop the steady erosion of freedom in America, as we surrender
one battlefield after another to the forces in our government obsessed with security, control and the wellbeing of corporations.
Over the last three evenings I have been watching films about similar events in
our history, where forces of moderation, decency and defenders of our constitutional rights squared off against the intolerance of power hungry assailants. The first was “Inherit the Wind,” a picture
about the Scopes "Monkey Trial" of 1925, with George C Scott playing the conservative preacher vs Jack Lemmon as the atheist lawyer in a small town trial of a teacher who dared to present Darwin's
theory of evolution. In that case, the Judiciary was the arena where these two gladiators fought, each for their own perceived view of the truth. What amazed me was that this issue is still being debated in our news
media today! Intolerance and myopic belief seem to move in waves, cycles. The next flick on my list was "Good Night, and Good Luck" about how CBS and Edward R. Murrow faced down Senator McCarthy in
1954.Those were chilling days, where people accused of communist affiliations lost careers, and even lives. Congressional hearings and the emerging media we now call TV were the battlefields in this one, as a
powerful conservative senator thought he would trump a news reporter in the national discourse, but found out he was wrong. The third movie was “All the President’s Men,” recounting Woodward
and Bernstein’s intrepid pursuit of the Watergate story. Cycles... 1925, 1954, then 1974 and now we get Bush. It seems America goes through this paroxysm about every 25-30 years or so, always associated with a
Republican administration, supported by the Christian right, a healthy dose of fear, and lately, with a scandal involving our intelligence community as well. (Liberals don’t get a pass here either. Just ask
those Japanese families rounded up after Pearl Harbor.)
As I watched that last movie, I noted the methods used by Woodward and Bernstein to root out the story. They relied on a few key things at first:
tracing down the social and business connections of people implicated in the break-in, phone calls to find and interview potential sources, and other public records that might provide evidence of
wrongdoing.
 At the surface, Watergate was a two bit burglary of the Democratic
Party offices in the Watergate Hotel, reportedly to check on malfunctioning wiretaps that had been placed there earlier. It was inadvertently discovered by a security guard who noticed duct tape on a
door lock. One of the men arrested was McCord, (former CIA) who had scribbled the name of one Howard Hunt in a notebook, another man with CIA roots. McCord had been head of security for CREEP (Committee to
RE-Elect the President), which suggested a connection to the Nixon White House. In fact, as many as 50 agents had been hired by Nixon to sabotage the Democrats and assure his re-election. They were partly
coordinated by Hunt, and G. Gordon Liddy who ran dirty tricks operations and also managed “The Plumbers” a secret White House group investigating information leaks. The social and business
connections between these conspirators, some going back to their college days, would lead to their downfall. One had only to follow the lines and the whole of the conspiracy could be diagrammed with ease.
Back then it took months to discover this network. This was an age before computers, cell phones, PDAs, or nifty digital recorders, when the reporters scribbled in little notebooks and then wrote their stories on
typewriters. They used old rotary dial phones for the hundreds of phone calls they made to try and track down potential sources, like the names of all the members of CREEP. The story was there, you see, hidden
away in the paper library records, bank records, phone records. A search of the CREEP banking records led to the discovery of a check for $25,000 made out to a Mr. Dahlberg, which ended up in the bank account of
the Watergate burglars. Deep Throat’s famous exhortation to “Follow the money” led through Maurice
Stands and pointed at Charles Colson, a senior White House aide. As the reporters called on one CREEP member after another, trying to get information and confirmation on who was involved, it was obvious that
many of the potential witnesses had been pressured to keep their silence. The White House was battling to maintain the cover-up of it’s illegal activities.
Even a GAO audit investigation of CREEP that involved 51 of 59 FBI Field Offices failed to publicly reveal the
heart of the story, and this alone was damning evidence that the scandal had far deeper roots than anyone first imagined. Thankfully, the number two man in the FBI, W. Mark Felt, leaked information to Woodward
as “Deep Throat.” Without that leak, the Watergate story would have died. The GAO audit was deftly
delayed until after Nixon’s re-nomination and the Grand Jury indictments were going to stop with the five
burglars. It’s a favorite tactic of wrongdoers, to obstruct and delay investigations aimed at discovering the
truth about their activities. Today we see the same energy at work, just as the 9-11 investigation was first opposed, then stalled, Justice Department investigations into the NSA data mining program and civil
lawsuits against the Telcoms are being blocked, the Abramov trial has been deftly put off until after the
important election this November, Delay resigns to avoid censure and “delay” his day in court. But the truth will eventually come out. That’s what Watergate told us back in 1974.
 As the Washington Post reporters continued to follow personal connections and
probed closer to White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman, the danger to the Nixon administration became acute. In a dramatic moment in the film,
Woodward pressured Deep Throat for more direct information and finally learned the true scope of the scandal. They bugged, wiretapped, destroyed documents,
leaked when it suited them to smear their Democratic opponents, and conducted a criminal conspiracy from within the White House and executive
branch. And that was not all. The scandal involved the entire US intelligence community—FBI, NSA, CIA, and even the complicity of the Justice Department.
(Sound familiar?) Deep Throat warned the reporters that their lives were now in danger to protect the covert operations that had been conducted. It symbolized
the threat to the very existence of the free press itself, a danger that is all too real now.
Watergate was a chilling time in our history. I was a young man just out of
college when the scandal played out in those long hot committee hearings. As I re-lived it all through the movie again, one salient thought kept returning to me. Could Woodward and Bernstein have broken this
story today? The two things that kept echoing in my mind were how the reporters followed the connections between people, like McCord’s connection to Hunt, and Stands connection to Colson, even a Post
employee who dated someone in CREEP who ended up providing the list of CREEP members. And I thought about all those phone calls the reporters had to make to find people and run the story down. This is
why these social connections, largely created by the way we communicate with one another, are of such great interest to the NSA today. It’s a primary reason why they want the phone records of every American.
With such fertile data, uncovering a network is simply a matter of correctly connecting up the phone numbers. What took Woodward and Bernstein months to ferret out can now be called up at lightning speed
on a computer. If the Watergate scandal were playing out today, how easy it would be to identify members in a pattern who might be sources of potential information sought by the reporters. The effort to silence them
would proceed seamlessly. If used to enforce a cover-up, The NSA could post a watch on each vulnerable nexus in the web. In fact, this is happening right now.
Watergate Redux
 During his confirmation hearings
General Hayden said: “Intelligence works in that nexus between the world as it is, and the world we are trying to make.” We had a frightening look at the world the intelligence community was trying
to make thirty years ago, and thankfully, two reporters and a key FBI insider put a stop to it. In 1974 the much discussed Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act (FISA) was passed to prevent wiretap abuse. It allowed warrantless wiretaps of foreign powers for up to one year, but did not permit surveillance of
U.S. citizens inside the United States. For foreign nationals in the US suspected of being agents of a foreign power, a court order was required to
proceed. In 2004 a “Lone Wolf” provision was added to broaden the permissible target to foreign persons suspected of terrorism, but was also
restricted to non-US citizens. In short, it was aimed at people like Bin Ladin, who were individuals, and not foreign governments or their agents. In all these cases, FISA does not authorize the surveillance of a US
citizen under any circumstances. And it placed the Judicial Branch, a judge, between the initiator of a wiretap and the intended target. That’s what Watergate was all about, illegal wiretapping ordered by the
President. After FISA, this could only be done by first appearing before a judge and showing sufficient cause
that the wiretap would produce evidence of illegal activity. Nixon tried to assert he had authority inherent in
the Executive Branch to wiretap, but lost a supreme court decision 8-0, as the court ruled that authority resides in the Judiciary, with a judge, not the president. Justice Lewis Powell wrote that our Fourth
Amendment freedoms "cannot properly be guaranteed if domestic security surveillance may be conducted
solely within the discretion of the Executive Branch.” Yet, even with this legal precedent and the historical context of Watergate, Bush soon determined to bypass and violate the law.
When then Director Hayden of NSA was summoned to the White House in October of 2001 to ask if all things possible were being done to combat terrorism, he indicated that he was doing everything within the
limits of the current law. That’s when that troublesome bright line, the law, started to be viewed as an
obstacle by the Bush Administration instead of a vital guardian of our freedoms as it was intended. At that moment, something died in America. In the flustered urgency of the post 9-11 days, with smoke still
billowing over Manhattan and Anthrax in the Capitol Building, the misapprehension of George W. Bush, supported by White House Council Alberto Gonzales, started to choke off the breath of freedom in America.
The president took upon himself the power of the legislature, and dismissed the authority of the judiciary, all
in one fell deed. The bright line of the law was moved, re-interpreted, disregarded, and Bush authorized Hayden to begin his warrantless wiretaps, and secretly collect the phone records of all US Citizens.
Those that put this idea into the president’s head, that he had broad wartime powers to use any means necessary to protect the
nation, were completely misguided. They omitted the word “lawful.” They argued the President’s inherent Article 2 powers, and his role as
Commander In Chief allowed him to authorize surveillance of phone calls and e-mails initiated by US citizens. Without any law directly dealing with or authorizing this, the President’s actions amounted to
simply making up a new law that suited his intention, just as he did when he assumed the authority to declare any US citizen an enemy combatant and detain him indefinitely.
In the case of Carlos Padilla, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote: “We have long since made it clear that a
state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens.” It
was held that Padilla deserved his day in court, and the government reluctantly tried him to an eventual conviction. Still, the fact that he was detained without civil rights, (a crime) has yet to be adjudicated. At
present, the issue of whether the president can bypass FISA, making up his own law based on perceived inherent powers of the Executive, has not reached the Supreme Court again. Before it does, the Republican
controlled congress is likely to change the law to permit the lawlessness. As it stands now, however, many argue that President Bush is a felon many times over. Each and every violation of existing law (FISA) is
subject to a $10,000 fine and up to 5 years in prison. I don’t know about you, but the “Lone Wolf” I am
worried about is not Bin Ladin, but President Bush! Bin Ladin may have knocked down the World Trade
Center, but his attack left our civil liberties unharmed. It is the President who has been flying airliners into the constitution, and knocking down one protection on our freedoms after another.
Modern Day Deep Throats
The battle that began with Nixon’s illegal activity has continued over the decades, waged in the courts,
Congress, and in the headlines of our newspapers. But it has also been fought within the invisible realms of the intelligence community itself. When a news story about CIA or NSA wrongdoing appears, it is evidence
that the struggle is still going on, for someone had to leak the information to the press. Of this, Hayden
again stated his desire: “The CIA needs to get out of the news as either source or subject.” He doesn’t want
intelligence operations analyzed, criticized or discussed on the front page of the morning papers, but Senator Wyden, complaining about the failure of the NSA to adequately inform congress, countered: “If we
had not read about the warrantless wiretaps in the papers, would 14 of 16 members of this body (the Senate Intelligence oversight committee) ever known about it?” Hayden answered that he had no way of knowing
that, but it is clear that he wished the question would have never come up.
Can anyone fail to see the extreme danger posed by a group of secret organizations who would prefer their
activities are never revealed, never authorized by law, never tested in court? Information is power in this
world, and it would not be hard to argue that the intelligence community is the true heart of power in our government. After obtaining broad authority, first assigned by the National Security Act of 1947, the
intelligence community quietly became our fourth branch of government. These clandestine organizations now inform both the Executive and Legislative branches, which rely upon the knowledge they receive from
intel services every day. The other branches are the “consumers” of intelligence, and we have seen the
stomach ache we get in Iraq when the food is bad. The primary concern of this fourth branch is preserving
the secrecy of its operations. That’s what the Watergate cover-up was really about, and secrecy is always
diametrically opposed to the truth and the public’s right to know what their government is doing, particularly when it infringes upon their civil and natural rights.
 A story broke last week
that ABC news reporters, and those of other major news organizations, were being phone tapped to try and run down who is presently leaking information on these secret NSA programs. Alberto Gonzales is dredging
up the 1917 Sedition Act and talking about prosecutions. How’s that for a direct assault upon our constitutional guarantee to a free press? Gonzales may want to
review the history on that Act. A provision applying it to the press was debated in Congress in 1917 and roundly rejected. It’s clear they want no more Woodward and
Bernstein’s. Now they are out to make sure there are no more Deep Throats as well. The forces empowering the cover-up of government wrongdoing have an
enormous advantage today over the press. Potential “leakers” (called “sources” by the free press) are now at grave risk of being identified and suppressed. Each and
every phone call and contact reporters make is now documented by the NSA, and possibly liable to phone tap. Modern day Woodward and Bernsteins stand a slim
chance of ever getting at the truth—except for men like Deep Throat. Call him what you will, W. Mark Felt was essential in undoing Watergate. Without his guiding
confirmation and leads, the story would have died. What if Felt had remained silent? It took his own sleuthing ability to get the information on the scandal to Woodward. Without that countervailing power,
inside the US intelligence establishment, Nixon and his dirty tricksters would have never been brought to justice. How ironic it was when Nixon, the man sworn to protect our constitution and faithfully execute our
laws, did the opposite, and our sole defender was a spymaster, a member of the same secret organizations Nixon used.
Now the NSA now has the tools to completely stop the likes of Woodward and Bernstein, but the real question is this: can they stop the next Deep Throat? Someone told James Risen of the NY Times about
the illegal wiretapping of American citizens, and someone told USA Today about the data mining on all the
rest of us. That’s what Porter Goss was all about when he was sent to the CIA to lop off heads. That’s what
John Negroponte is all about as he stands in as the new overall intelligence czar. They want the departmentalization and infighting of our intelligence services ended, and everyone in one carefully
centralized and well controlled lock-step, (like the Republican dominated Congress is run). The entire shakeup of the US intelligence community is also about getting the leakers, suppressing those authorities
in any quadrant of the government who might form a counter to the administration’s all encompassing power.
Look at just a very few of the things President Bush has done:
• Restricted the right to free assembly by creating “free speech zones” out of media view.
• Attacked and invaded Iraq based on false intelligence.
• Asserted that US citizens can be declared enemies and detained without civil rights.
• Discarded the Geneva conventions and authorized torture of enemy detainees.
• Approved use of evidence obtained through torture.
• Authorized American run gulags on foreign soil to imprison enemy combatants indefinitely.
• Authorized rendition of detainees to foreign countries that also permit torture.
• Authorized wiretapping of phone calls and e-mails of US citizens without court order.
• Authorized NSA collection and analysis of phone records for all US citizens.
• Exempted telecommunications companies from conformance with SEC reporting rules.
• Suppressed legal challenges to all of the above on the grounds of “national security.”
• Ignored, reinterpreted or bypassed laws passed by congress.
Yes, Bush has reserved the authority, by signing statement, to ignore federal statutes. All presidents
combined from Washington through Clinton issued a total of 322 such signing statements to express their view or disapproval of a law. Bush has now issued over 750! In short, he has dramatically expanded the
power of the executive against the will of our elected representatives in congress, the judiciary and the constitution itself.
The one ray of hope in all of this is that many of these stories were leaked by someone who had to have knowledge of these secret, allegedly illegal operations. This means that, just as with Deep Throat in
Watergate, there are countervailing authorities inside the intelligence community who are trying to check the
growing powers of this president. One side calls them traitors, like Bill Bennett, a Neo-Con ideologue who
said they and the reporters they confide in should be sent to jail for sedition, but others call them patriots of
the highest order. They’re standing up against the incredible power of this runaway executive branch, and
fighting for truth, and our rights under the constitution. They’re leaking for a reason—the government is breaking the law, violating the constitution and putting our freedoms at grave risk.
Watergate was all about the power of truth, the free press, and the freedom of speech—all three in dire jeopardy now. We have come to a dangerous crossroads in this country, empowered by computers and
technology, where the peril to our freedoms as guaranteed under our constitution is much more threatening than the Watergate scandal. In fact, the transgressions of Bush make Nixon look like an amateur. Our
system is now careening out of balance and this is a far more serious than the problem of terrorism.
The Truth is Illegal
Soon to be head of the CIA Michael Hayden had this to say about the accountability of his agency to the American people and the constitution: “Accountability is one thing and a very valuable thing, and we will
have it. But true accountability is not served by inaccurate, harmful or illegal public disclosures.” He
neglected to mention that these “disclosures,” (leaks to the free press), were about the illegal activity of our
government officials and agencies! Oh, they can haggle all they want to about the legality of their wiretaps
and data mining. The fact is, they targeted US citizens, and refused to go to a court for authorization. They
bypassed the judiciary, just as they have kept Congress itself in the dark all these years. The data mining
program was only hastily “briefed” to select congressional leaders after the scandal broke, yet the program
began on Oct 6, 2001. Its authorization is shakily linked to the power Congress gave to Bush to attack Afghanistan. How does authority to war on the Taliban suddenly translate into the NSA with all my phone
records? So, when someone tells the truth about government lawbreaking, Hayden says it’s an “illegal disclosure.” The truth is illegal. Got that?
Americans aren’t blind, they see the duplicity, the hypocrisy, the mania for security, the corporate serving
line of this administration. That’s what the polls show. That’s why Bush is not given a 71% approval rating,
but a 29% rating instead. We don’t like what he has authorized and done, and we don’t want it to continue.
The more people know about the transgressions of this president, the more opposed they become. This is why Bush and Cheney so often use the cloak of secrecy to hide their actions. After all, the constitution
begins with three words: We The People. But the agencies that have seized this new authority, in secret,
will be very reluctant to give it back. They will use their powers to stifle, first and foremost, the free press so the truth cannot be disclosed. (USA Today apparently knew about the NSA data mining a year ago, and
Hayden leaned on them to keep silent.) Did it ever occur to our intelligence agencies that their innate opposition to the free flow of information and truth is a direct affront to our most sacred and cherished
freedoms? Pardon me, but this NSA scandal is a bit like a father locking his daughter in her room, for her own security of course, and then molesting, and raping her! The very thing they seek to hold safe is
destroyed by their methods. Truth is not illegal. If they find it problematic, inconvenient, embarrassing,
disruptive of their effort to collar al Qaeda, too bad. I’ll take truth every day over the lies and secrecy implicit
in things like this data mining program, and millions of Americans will stand with me on that issue—just you
wait until we can get our hands on a ballot box again, assuming Diebold does not get their hands on them after we vote.
By Their Deeds You Shall Know Them
The defenders of all this wrongdoing always elevate national security above the very things that made this
nation great—our freedoms guaranteed under the law. Oddly, these are the same people who go about with
liberty on their lips to justify this awful invasion of Iraq. They insist on liberty over there, but allow enormous
assaults on our Bill of Rights over here—to keep us safe. Mark my words, this NSA spying on Americans is worse than we know or think right now, and it has placed into government hands an enormously powerful
means of control and oppression, all vested in a secret organization operating outside the public view, paying but the barest lip service to Congress, and deliberately sidestepping the courts.
This entire reaction against terrorism is a bit like anaphylactic shock. The body is exposed to something potentially harmful, like a toxin or even something innocuous like pollen, and it goes into a fit of allergic
reaction. The immune system cranks up to a degree where it actually becomes life threatening, capable of
choking off breath and stopping the heart. That’s what is happening to America now. The potential toxin of
terrorism has caused this massive antibody-like reaction in our government, and our very freedoms, checks
and balances, are being choked off. If it continues, the heart of our unique system of government will finally
stop, and we will be left with the cold death of dictatorship. This is what happens when the cure is worse than the disease, and it’s happening now, right before our eyes.
Consider these twenty salient characteristics of the Bush Administration:
1) Powerful use of symbols, patriotic slogans and a strong nationalist mentality.
2) A merging of religious ideology to justify and further government policy.
3) Constant generation of fear and demonization of foreign enemies to rally popular support.
4) Serious allegations of fraudulent electioneering.
5) The use of propaganda and disinformation to mask or distort truth.
6) Adoption of policies aimed at restricting or limiting free speech and a free press.
7) Government control of, or strong influence over, the dissemination of information and mass media.
8) Insistence on secrecy and the suppression of government information.
9) Obsession with national security as a justification for all policies.
10) Over reliance of the military as a solution to problems.
11) An overt foreign policy based on aggression and war.
12) Contempt for laws that restrict or limit executive power.
13) Disregard for the recognition and protection of human rights and liberties.
14) Disdain for intellectuals as “elitists,” particularly those opposed to the administration.
15) Obsession with crime and punishment of “evildoers.”
16) Creation of strong, centralized internal homeland security agencies.
17) Extreme consolidation and abuse of power in the executive, while marginalizing other branches.
18) A confluence of corporate and government interests.
19) Imbalance of power in one political party which controls all reigns of government.
20) Widespread cronyism and creeping financial corruption.
These traits are all classic attributes of fascism.
There are those that say it could never happen here…Yet it is happening here, slowly but surely, as one
outrage after another appears before us, and then is lost in the divisive stream of time released, government generated “news.”
 So say farewell to Woodward and Bernstein. And while you’re at it you can also say
farewell freedom in America. Once you beat down those things guaranteeing one right, the protection for all others dies as well. Thomas Jefferson said it this way: “The Constitution... expressly declares that 'Congress shall make no law respecting
an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,' thereby guarding in the same sentence and
under the same words, the freedom of religion, of speech, and of the press; insomuch that whatever violates either throws down the sanctuary which covers the others.”
This conflict between freedom and security must end with the triumph of liberty—or our nation will cease to
exist. Because, as we have seen, we can’t have it both ways. We have to choose. Either we have the right
to free speech, the right to assembly, the right to keep and bear arms, the right to be secure in our persons
and homes from unreasonable search and seizure, or we have none of these rights. You can’t water down
the constitution, reinterpret it, obey a few provisions you like while discarding those you don’t like. If the
president can overrule one provision, he can overrule them all. The concentration of power in the Executive
Branch, exacerbated by Republican control of both Congress and the Judiciary, has created a perilous
imbalance in our system, which is now teetering at the edge of a fall. Congress is mired in divisive haggling over things like English as our national language, immigration programs, and a constitutional amendment
against gay marriage, all issues designed to distract and divide the electorate which is about to express its power this November. The judges are not consulted, lawsuits are quashed, investigations stopped cold or
postponed until after that key terrain marker. If the sycophantic Republican hold on Congress is not broken this year, the battle to secure our freedoms may be lost. Our sole protection is now relegated to the
patriotism and opposition of a few Intelligence community insiders, undoubtedly hunted and harried, as they try to expose the wrongdoing and corruption that poses such a grave threat to our liberties.
The warning words of Jefferson echo still: “Our government is now taking so steady a course as to
show by what road it will pass to destruction; to wit: by consolidation first and then corruption, its necessary consequence…What has destroyed liberty and the rights of man in every government which has ever
existed under the sun? The generalizing and concentrating all cares and powers into one body…(but) The
road to that glory which never dies is to use power for the support of the laws and liberties of our country, not for their destruction.”
Article by: John Schettler June, 2006
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