Hullabaloo

Saturday, July 05, 2008

 
Good Old Boys

by digby

McJoan over at Kos wrote an interesting post yesterday using some of the words of Senator Frank Church to explain why giving the government the right to spy on Americans without warrants is a bad idea. This is not some arcane theoretical argument. It's real, it happened and it wasn't that long ago.

This is probably a good time to reprise a post I wrote some time back on this same issue. As we listen to all the ecomiums this week-end to that racist creep Jesse Helms, we would be wise to remember another North Carolina Senator, Sam Ervin:

Very recent history shows that we are very wise to be suspicious of these things. It is not only not unimaginable, it was definitely done, within my adult lifetime, by a former GOP president and many of that president's staff and acolytes who are now in the Bush administration. Congressional oversight was what nailed them before and they are determined not to be tripped up by that pesky constitutional requirement again.

For a full primer on this issue, read this fascinating article about conservative southern Democrat, Senator Sam Ervin, whose devotion to civil liberties led him to pursue inquiries that led all the way to the White House:

SENATOR SAM ERVIN AND THE ARMY SPY SCANDAL OF 1970-1971: BALANCING NATIONAL SECURITY AND CIVIL LIBERTIES IN A FREE SOCIETY

"For the past four years, the U.S. Army has been closely watching civilian political activity within the United States." So charged Christopher H. Pyle, a former intelligence officer, in the January 1970 edition of Washington Monthly. Pyle's account of military spies snooping on law-abiding citizens and recording their actions in secret government computers sent a shudder through the nation's press. Images from George Orwell's novel 1984 of Big Brother and the thought police filled the newspapers. Public alarm prompted the Senate Subcommittee on Consti­tutional Rights, chaired by Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina, to investigate. For more than a year, Ervin struggled against a cover-up to get to the bottom of the surveillance system. Frustrated by the Nixon Administration's misleading statements, claims of inherent executive powers, and refusals to disclose information on the basis of national security, the Senator called for public hearings in 1971 to examine "the dangers the Army's program presents to the principles of the Constitution."

[...]

Although he did not know it at the time, Senator Ervin had started down the road to Watergate. It was during the subcommittee's investigation of Army surveillance in 1970 and 1971 that Ervin stumbled onto the secretive programs and questions of executive power that would lead him to chair the famous Watergate Hearings in 1973. Ironically, it was at the same time that Ervin began his investigation into military spying that Richard Nixon and his men began their own political espionage that put them, too, on the road to Watergate.

[...]

Attorney General John N. Mitchell provided the legal basis for the increased domestic surveillance soon afterward. According to the Attorney General's spokesman, the Administration had the right to collect and store information on civilian political activity because of "the inherent powers of the federal government to protect the internal security of the nation. We feel that's our job." Thus, the Administration claimed a virtually unchecked power -- not subject to Congressional oversight -- to carry out unlimited domestic surveillance on anyone it wished.

The Church Commission, formed after the Nixon administration, recommended the creation of the FISA court as a direct result of the abuses of the previous few decades on the part of both Democratic and Republican administrations. Republicans were upset by this:

An intense debate erupted during former U.S. president Gerald Ford's administration over the president's powers to eavesdrop without warrants to gather foreign intelligence, newly disclosed government documents revealed.

Former president George Bush, current Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice-President Dick Cheney are cited in the documents. The roughly 200 pages of historic records reflect a remarkably similar dispute between the White House and Congress fully three decades before President George W. Bush's acknowledgment he authorized wiretaps without warrants of some Americans in terrorism investigations.

"Yogi Berra was right: it's deja vu all over again," said Tom Blanton, executive director for the U.S. National Security Archives, a private research group that compiles collections of sensitive government documents.

"It's the same debate."

[...]

Yes, it looks as though we have to clean up the same messes we cleaned up the first time these miscreants were in power and we'd better start preparing the public for it. Saying "trust us" isn't going to cut it:

Civil liberties watchdogs worry that, in the reaction to 9/11, security agencies are going overboard, much as they did during the 1960s and early '70s, when huge programs of illegal spying and dirty tricks led to reforms (box)."These agencies haven't remembered what happened to them in the '70s," says University of Georgia scholar Loch Johnson, who as a staff member on the House and Senate intelligence committees helped draft those reforms. "You heard the same arguments back in the Johnson and Nixon administrations: 'Why do you want to shackle our hands?'"

Why indeed. Given their history, we'd be fools to accept their assurances that they are not using their extraordinary police, military and intelligence power to spy on their political opponents. That's what they always do. There are many, many examples of this administration's "grown-ups" lying in wait for a quarter century to roll the clock back to a time of Richard Nixon and the Imperial presidency.

Sadly, that post was written more than two years ago trying to get the Democrats to back Russ Feingold. They didn't listen then and they still won't listen. Back in the day there were some people in the congress who had principles. Sam Ervin wasn't a goo-goo latte sipping liberal. In fact, he was an old fashioned Southern Democrat with all that implied. But he did have a bottom line when it came to the constitution and the separation of powers. That used to be pretty basic stuff. Now it's just another political issue like funding a highway bill or passing a resolution in praise of flag waving. They are about to enshrine these spying powers into law with a Supreme Court that very likely has a majority to uphold it.

Your representatives are out in their districts this week-end glad handing and trolling for votes. if you've got some time on your hands and you'd like to ask these people a few questions about why they don't support the constitution, click over here to see where they are. Bring your video camera.


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digby 7/05/2008 12:00:00 PM |