Bush's Spying: Scandalous, or Echo of Clinton-Era "Echelon"?
 

     Friday's big scoop by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau on domestic spying by the National Security Agency, "Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts," no doubt had the effect the paper intended, throwing the White House on the defensive and causing the renewal of the Patriot Act to be thwarted, a long-time goal of the Times editorial page.

     But is this sort of terrorist surveillance truly a new and troubling thing? The government's Echelon spy program was reported on during the Clinton administration, in a 2000 report on CBS's "60 Minutes." In words that ring familiar, host Steve Kroft intoned:

     "If you made a phone call today or sent an e-mail to a friend, there's a good chance what you said or wrote was captured and screened by the country's largest intelligence agency. The top-secret Global Surveillance Network is called Echelon, and it's run by the National Security Agency and four English-speaking allies: Canada, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand. The mission is to eavesdrop on enemies of the state: foreign countries, terrorist groups and drug cartels. But in the process, Echelon's computers capture virtually every electronic conversation around the world."

     This is what the Times reported Friday: "Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the [National Security Agency] agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said."

     Not that Bush and Republicans are content with the Times' revelations. Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas accuses the Times of (as the AP puts it), "endangering American security to sell a book by waiting until the day of the terror-fighting Patriot Act reauthorization to report that the government has eavesdropped on people without court-approved warrants."

     Cornyn was referring to a book by Times reporter and story author James Risen, whose book "State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush administration" will be published by the Free Press in January. The Times failed to make a note of that in its Friday story.

     Blogger Tom Maguire thinks a correction is in order on this Saturday paragraph from intelligence reporter David Sanger ("In Speech, Bush Says He Ordered Domestic Spying"): "Mr. Bush's public confirmation on Saturday of the existence of one of the country's most secret intelligence programs, which had been known to only a select number of his aides, was a rare moment in his presidency. Few presidents have publicly confirmed the existence of heavily classified intelligence programs like this one."

     Maguire points us to this phrase just a few graphs on, showing that more than "select" aides knew about the program and that Bush had repeatedly briefed Congress on it (with no outcry from the liberal senators now excoriating Bush over the program's existence): "He said Congressional leaders had been repeatedly briefed on the program, and that intelligence officials 'receive extensive training to ensure they perform their duties consistent with the letter and intent of the authorization.'"

     Reporter Sanger also uses one of the paper's favorite phrases to describe Bush's Saturday radio address to the nation in which he criticized Congress: "He also lashed out at senators, both Democrats and Republicans, who voted on Friday to block the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act, which expanded the president's power to conduct surveillance, with warrants, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks."

     Indeed, President Bush reacted strongly, saying in his address that as a result of the Times' report, "our enemies have learned information they should not have."

     John Hinderaker at Power Line sees a Valerie Plame parallel: "How does the Times know this? Because intelligence officials who are hostile to the Bush administration, and disagree with its policies, leaked the information….Under the Plame precedent, this case is a no-brainer. The intelligence officials who leaked to the Times should be identified, criminally prosecuted, and sent to prison."

     One wonders if the Times will get behind that prosecution as vigorously as they did when it was I. Lewis Libby in the spotlight.

     The Times followed up with a worried front-page "news analysis" by Scott Shane (of the Joe Wilson appreciation society) on Saturday, "Behind Power, One Principle."

     "A single, fiercely debated legal principle lies behind nearly every major initiative in the Bush administration's war on terror, scholars say: the sweeping assertion of the powers of the presidency. From the government's detention of Americans as 'enemy combatants' to the just-disclosed eavesdropping in the United States without court warrants, the administration has relied on an unusually expansive interpretation of the president's authority. That stance has given the administration leeway for decisive action, but it has come under severe criticism from some scholars and the courts."

     Confederate Yankee accuses Risen and Lichtblau in their Monday follow-up story of "sensationalizing the scope of Bush's executive order" and has more useful background on Bush's legal justification of using surveillance against terror suspects.

For Friday's big scoop on "domestic spying," click here.

For the follow-up "news analysis" by Scott Shane, click here.

Times Approves of "More Humble Tone" from Bush
 

     After harping on President Bush's purported inability to admit war mistakes, the Times got some of what it wanted from Bush in his address to the nation Sunday night --"a more humble tone."

     That's from White House reporter Elisabeth Bumiller's lead story Monday, "Asking Patience, President Cites Progress In Iraq."

     "President Bush declared to the nation on Sunday night that the United States was winning the war in Iraq and pleaded with his viewers not to 'give in to despair' over a conflict that has cost more than 2,100 American lives and an estimated 30,000 Iraqi deaths….The president, speaking in a steady voice punctuated by the constant gesturing of his hands, nonetheless acknowledged his critics more than he has in the past, and adopted a more humble tone. 'I also want to speak to those of you who did not support my decision to send troops to Iraq,' Mr. Bush said. 'I have heard your disagreement, and I know how deeply it is felt.' But he also made clear that he himself had not wavered in his commitment to the war."

     Bumiller shows how a Friday Times story on terrorist surveillance stepped on good election news in Iraq: "The president's address, his fifth major speech on Iraq in 19 days, was the culmination of an intense campaign by the White House to try to stop a slide in support for the war that began last summer and intensified this fall. Mr. Bush delivered his remarks as he has come under new criticism from both Democrats and Republicans for ordering the National Security Agency to conduct an electronic eavesdropping program in the United States without first obtaining warrants. The disclosure of that program, reported Friday in The New York Times, has overshadowed some of the good news of the Iraq election, and has frustrated a White House that was hoping to use the high turnout and relative calm of the vote as a positive end to the president's series of speeches."

     Bumiller then pens this puzzler: "As he has in his previous speeches, Mr. Bush said he had made mistakes in Iraq and acknowledged in a more personal way than before the suffering he himself had caused."

     David Sanger's Monday front-page "news analysis" took a similar tone right from the headline ("More Humble, Still Firm").

     "The president that the nation saw Sunday night from the Oval Office -- the setting from which he announced the opening moments of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq -- was far more humble about the mistakes he had made over the past two and a half years. Rather than dismissing critics with a wave of the hand and an acid retort, as he often has, he asked those who opposed the invasion to help make the biggest gamble of his presidency work. But he never backed away from his insistence that, with patience, the United States will claim victory, as he has defined it."

     Sanger shudders: "Mr. Bush was also on the offensive -- with a much harsher tone than he used Sunday evening -- when he strode into the Roosevelt Room early Saturday and confirmed to the country that he had ordered the National Security Agency to conduct warrantless searches within the United States in a hunt for terror suspects -- a power he said belonged to him as commander in chief, and one he insisted he would continue to exercise."

For more Bumiller on Bush's address to the nation, click here.

For more of Sanger's analysis, click here.

The "Charisma" of Arafat, the "Piety" of Hamas
 

     Israel-based Steven Erlanger, "In Era After Arafat, Islamic Militants Are Edging Into Power" on Sunday once again almost ignores the terrorist past of former Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat and the radical anti-Israel terror group Hamas.

     "The success of the militant Islamic group Hamas in the latest round of Palestinian local elections is just the latest indication of the deterioration of the main Palestinian faction, Fatah, after the death of Yasir Arafat last year….Without the binding charisma of Mr. Arafat, and without the ability or will to use his aggressive tactics, Mr. Abbas is struggling to manage a renewed struggle between his secular Fatah faction and the Islamists that Mr. Arafat repressed and delayed."

     Erlanger, who once characterized Arafat's "heroic history," describes the terror group Hamas and its "reputation for piety."

     "[Arafat] relished the role of revolutionary, but he was no administrator, and his Palestinian Authority was criticized for corruption, indolence and a failure to care about ordinary Palestinians. And Mr. Arafat's decision to recognize Israel and negotiate with it over the 1993 Oslo accords, which allowed him to return from exile, did not produce a Palestinian state. All that was ripe ground for Hamas, with its reputation for piety, its social-welfare network and its military wing, which carried out attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians."

     More praise for Arafat: "His successor, Mr. Abbas, is entirely different, lacking the charisma of Mr. Arafat, a natural politician. A negotiator and man of logic, who opposes terrorism and the war against Israel as counterproductive, Mr. Abbas, at 70, carries all the weight of Mr. Arafat's failures without any credit for his successes."

     Erlanger finally says, deep into the story: "Hamas, after all, has carried out many attacks against Israelis, and it has been designated a terrorist group by Israel, Europe and the United States….Hamas, which believes, like Hezbollah in Lebanon, that politics and armed resistance must go hand in hand, may never give up its 'right to resist' or its weapons, but it may find itself forced politically not to use them, or not very often."

For more of Erlanger on Arafat's legacy and Hamas, click here.