Domestic spying is about politics, not security

Well, it turns out that Bush Co. refused to go to the judges for spying warrants because of who they were spying on.

Governor Bill Richardson, Senator Joe Biden, former President Jimmy Carter and Assistant Secretary of State William Burns all had their phones tapped for political reasons.

I am glad that we can now see the "national security-911-evil terraist" line of defense for what it is: an excuse to trash the constitutional rights that our fore-fathers fought and died for.

We had the capability to stop 9-11, we were tracking the hijackers. Our bloated intelligence system screwed up and a lot of people died. The 'patriot' act did not fix it.

Of course the kool-aid drinking moonbats of the authoritarian wing of the right will try to make excuses. They will attempt to muddy the waters and attack the sources.

"Well, its not like they are spying on your mom"

No, they are spying on the officials that she elected to represent her interests.

Link?

http://www.onlinejournal.org/Special_Reports/042505Madsen/042505madsen.html

Your source is this guy (http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/). Any other sources?

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How about Gov. Bill Richardson himself? He seems to be taking it seriously.

New Mexico Newspaper (http://www.abqtrib.com/albq/nw_local_state_government/article/0,2564,ALBQ_19859_3736152,00.html)

From your link...

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An online journalist then speculated that Richardson's conversations with former Secretary of State Colin Powell and another U.S. official about North Korea might have been among Bolton's requests.



"The governor is upset that his conversations with Secretary Powell would be intercepted since most of them were domestic calls," said Richardson spokesman Billy Sparks. "The governor felt his calls about North Korea were confidential."

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It looks like Richardson is getting his info from the OP's source.

Feel free to attack the source since the information is probobly correct and completely damning to your dear leader.

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It looks like Richardson is getting his info from the OP's source.

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And like I said, it looks like Richardson is taking it seriously. But he was only involved with negotiations with North Korea, so what would he know?

FWIW I think the Bush administration is utterly incompetent.

If you had used Ann Coulter as a source I would have made the same post.

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It looks like Richardson is getting his info from the OP's source.

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And like I said, it looks like Richardson is taking it seriously. But he was only involved with negotiations with North Korea, so what would he know?

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So if enough people quote the same bad source for info it's OK?

You must then believe Saddam Hussein had ties to Al-Qaida.

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You must then believe Saddam Hussein had ties to Al-Qaida.

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No, can you name one intelligent person who takes this claim seriously and believes it to be true?

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You must then believe Saddam Hussein had ties to Al-Qaida.

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No, can you name one intelligent person who takes this claim seriously and believes it to be true?

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No, that was my point. Intelligent people need to see credible evidence to form opinions.

Has the Bush administration used the NSA to spy on it's political rivals? I don't know and I will need a better source of info than Wayne Madsen to believe it has. The OP apparently feels differently.

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You must then believe Saddam Hussein had ties to Al-Qaida.

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No, can you name one intelligent person who takes this claim seriously and believes it to be true?

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Don't let 'em divert the theme of this thread. Bush is using Nioxian tactics to consolidate his power, checks and balances be damned.

This is what we know, imagine what we don't know.

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You must then believe Saddam Hussein had ties to Al-Qaida.

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No, can you name one intelligent person who takes this claim seriously and believes it to be true?

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Don't let 'em divert the theme of this thread. Bush is using Nioxian tactics to consolidate his power, checks and balances be damned.

This is what we know, imagine what we don't know.

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Convince me. Come up with a better source than Madsen.

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No, that was my point. Intelligent people need to see credible evidence to form opinions.


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And as I will point out AGAIN: a credible evidence to the truth of the matter is GOV BILL RICHARDSON IS TAKING IT SERIOUSLY.

You didn't hear the Gov laugh it off and say, "What a nut case! What a crazy theory!"

No, what I think he said was, "I know George Bush, I've met him, and that slimey group surounding him is perfectly capable of something like this."

So like I said, did anyone take the Saddam/Terrorist claims seriously? That is evidence that they were false. People in the know ignored them.

Hey! Those lies came from the same group of people you are so ready to trust being able to spy without oversight.

Bush was denied wiretaps, bypassed them
WASHINGTON, Dec. 26 (UPI) -- U.S. President George Bush decided to skip seeking warrants for international wiretaps because the court was challenging him at an unprecedented rate.

A review of Justice Department reports to Congress by Hearst newspapers shows the 26-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court modified more wiretap requests from the Bush administration than the four previous presidential administrations combined.

The 11-judge court that authorizes FISA wiretaps modified only two search warrant orders out of the 13,102 applications approved over the first 22 years of the court's operation.

But since 2001, the judges have modified 179 of the 5,645 requests for surveillance by the Bush administration, the report said. A total of 173 of those court-ordered "substantive modifications" took place in 2003 and 2004. And, the judges also rejected or deferred at least six requests for warrants during those two years -- the first outright rejection of a wiretap request in the court's history.

From your link...

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Sparks said Richardson's call to Dodd was triggered when he read an online story by Washington journalist Wayne Madsen.

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It looks like Richardson is trying to find out if Madsen is right. Richardson is looking for other sources and not taking Madsen at face value. We should do the same.

This is good info about Bush's wiretaps, but I was looking for info that the Bush adminstration used these wiretaps against it's politcal rivals.

God is she sexy. Love those boots.

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/After_domestic_spying_reports_U.S._spying_1227.htm l

"President Bush and other top officials in his administration used the National Security Agency to secretly wiretap the home and office telephones and monitored private email accounts of members of the United Nations Security Council in early 2003 to determine how foreign delegates would vote on a U.N. resolution that paved the war for the U.S.-led war in Iraq, NSA documents show."

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falcon, you should realize by now from some of the other threads, that the paranoid anti-Bush hacks don't really care if those sources and their stories are credible, because it could happen.

I am NOT anti-Bush, Im pro Constitution.

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"The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

-Hamlet (III, ii, 239)

A good link, but this is about spying against foreign diplomats on US soil.



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The source added that U.S. spying on the U.N. isn't new.

"It's part of the job," the intelligence source said. "Everyone knows it's being done."


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The Washington Post printed a 514-word article on a back page with the headline "Spying Report No Shock to U.N," while the Los Angeles Times emphasized from the outset that U.S. spy activities at the United Nations are "long-standing," Solomon wrote.

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The title of your thread is "Domestic spying is about politics, not security" and this link is about the lead-up to the Iraq war.

Still, the point about the Bush administration infringing on civil liberties is more than valid.


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According to one former official, "The administration pushed the envelope by tapping their home phones."



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[tylerdurden]

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Of course the kool-aid drinking moonbats of the authoritarian wing of the right will try to make excuses.

And of course the kool-aid drinking moonbats of the authoritarian wing of the left will try to convince us that they should be given this position of power instead of the kool-aid drinking moonbats of the authoritarian wing of the right.

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FYP.

[andyfox]

The source does not seem to be a credible one. Yet I'd like to hear what Richardson, Biden, and Bolton now have to say about this in light of the FISA flap. The reasons the administration have given for circumventing the FISA court don't hold water. It is not an outrageous surmise that they felt that some of the taps they wanted would not have been approved.