I Cogitate

Same Agencies to Run, Oversee Surveillance Program
Walter Pincus
Washington Post
August 7, 2007; Page A02

The Bush administration plans to leave oversight of its expanded foreign eavesdropping program to the same government officials who supervise the surveillance activities and to the intelligence personnel who carry them out, senior government officials said yesterday.

The law, which permits intercepting Americans' calls and e-mails without a warrant if the communications involve overseas transmission, gives Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales responsibility for creating the broad procedures determining whose telephone calls and e-mails are collected. It also gives McConnell and Gonzales the role of assessing compliance with those procedures.

...It is left to the director of national intelligence and the attorney general to "assess compliance with such procedures" and report their assessments to the House and Senate intelligence panels, the statute states.

Gonzalez is also required to provide semiannual reports to the House and Senate intelligence and Judiciary committees, which are to include any accounts of abuse or noncompliance that Justice and intelligence officials discover in their internal reviews.

New law expands power to wiretap
Diminishes oversight of NSA spy program
Charlie Savage
Boston Globe
August 6, 2007

WASHINGTON -- President Bush signed a new law yesterday that expands the government's power to wiretap phone calls and e-mails on American soil without court oversight, capping a sudden victory for the White House despite loud criticism from advocates of civil liberties and privacy rights...

...Instead, it allows executive-branch agencies to conduct oversight-free surveillance of all international calls and e-mails, including those with Americans on the line, with the sole requirement that the intelligence-gathering is "directed at a person reasonably believed to be located outside the United States." There is no requirement that either caller be a suspected terrorist, spy, or criminal.

The law requires the government to delete any American's private information that it picks up, but it contains an exception allowing agents to maintain files of information about an American that has foreign intelligence value or that may be evidence of a crime.

As a check against abuse, the law requires Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Michael McConnell, director of national intelligence, to design procedures for the program and to submit them for review by a secret national security court that normally approves warrant applications for intelligence-related wiretapping on US soil.

"...Yes, that's right: Oversight will be in the hands of the same officials who carry the program out..."

Chief Spy or Chief Enforcer?
Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
August 8, 2007

As the director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell is supposed to be above politics.

But last week, as the White House was successfully bullying spooked congressional Democrats into expanding the government's authority to eavesdrop on Americans without a warrant, McConnell was President Bush's most effective enforcer.

And if that weren't controversial enough, some Democrats are charging that McConnell initially expressed his support for a much more restrictive Democratic plan -- then reversed himself under pressure from the White House.

Greg Miller writes in the Los Angeles Times that McConnell's "unusually high-profile role in the negotiations appears to have strained his relationships with key Democrats and has prompted questions about whether the nation's top intelligence official, who is supposed to operate above the political fray, had allowed himself to be used for partisan purposes...

..."After lobbying for the legal changes for more than a year, McConnell maneuvered himself into the position of passing judgment on each proposal that surfaced during the week, angering Democrats by declaring their bills inadequate.

"He also engaged in extensive negotiations with Democrats, during which his apparent changes of position left some members suggesting on the House floor that the intelligence director had become a puppet for the White House.

"At one point, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) expressed bewilderment that McConnell had issued a statement rejecting the Democrats' approach one day after he had told members that their measure 'significantly enhances America's security...'

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