SAN FRANCISCO, July 4, 2008
Judge Rejects Bush's Stance On Wiretaps
Says Current FISA Law Does Not Allow Executive Branch To Overstep Law
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(AP)
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Interactive
Domestic Surveillance
The debate over the Bush administration's controversial wiretapping program.
U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker on Wednesday said that when Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 1978 it established the "exclusive" means for engaging in wiretaps, and that the president in his capacity as commander in chief could not evade that law.
At the same time, Judge Walker barred the U.S. branch of the now-defunct Al Haramain Islamic Foundation, an Islamic charity based in Ashland, Calif., from using a top secret document to push forward its lawsuit challenging the government's surveillance of that group.
He gave the foundation 30 days to refile its lawsuit with other evidence proving it was a surveillance target.
The Al Haramain's lawyers had claimed federal officials illegally eavesdropped on their telephone calls without court approval under the administration's so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program.
At the heart of the challenge was a top secret call log that the Treasury Department accidentally turned over to Al Haramain's lawyers, who say it showed government terrorist hunters listened to their phone conversations with foundation officials living in Saudi Arabia.
Al Haramain lawyer Jon Eisenberg last year told Walker that the lawsuit is dead without the use of the call log to prove illegal surveillance.
But several public disclosures about the Bush administration surveillance program in general and about the charity's role in particular since then could help Al Haramain lawyers prove their case, Eisenberg said after the ruling was issued late Wednesday.
Government lawyers did not immediately return a call for comment.
Last year, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also barred the foundation lawyers from using the log as evidence after the Bush administration invoked the so-called state secrets privilege, arguing that to do so would harm national security interests.
But the appeals court sent the case back to Walker to determine if the privilege is trumped by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The act, known as FISA, was passed by Congress in 1978 and requires government investigators to obtain a warrant from a secret court in Washington to conduct electronic eavesdropping of suspected terrorists inside the country.
Walker did rule that FISA does trump the state secrets privilege:
"Congress included in the FISA bill a declaration that the FISA regime, together with the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 … were to be the “exclusive means” by which domestic electronic surveillance for national security purposes could be conducted. … This provision and its legislative history left no doubt that Congress intended to displace entirely the various warrantless wiretapping and surveillance programs undertaken by the executive branch and to leave no room for the president to undertake warrantless surveillance in the domestic sphere in the future.However, Walker still barred Al Haramain's lawyers from using the National Security Agency call log they accidentally received.
While conceding Walker's ruling was a setback for his client, Eisenberg contended the government also suffered a loss when Walker ruled that FISA trumps the government's ability to invoke the so-called state secret privilege, as it did in the Al Haramain case.
"The broader picture is that this is a big loss for the government," Eisenberg said.
That aspect of Walker's ruling could boost some 40 other cases pending against telecommunication companies that allegedly cooperated with the government's warrantless wiretapping program. The government is also invoking the state secrets privilege as it seeks to toss out those lawsuits.
Congress, however, is scheduled next week to vote on whether to grant the companies legal protection from those lawsuits.
© MMVIII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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See all 298 CommentsLAWS are For Everyone ! Even CRIMINALS ,like W !
This Judge IS The Man !
AMERICA STAND UP OR SHUT UP!
---"At the same time, Judge Walker barred the U.S. branch of the now-defunct Al Haramain Islamic Foundation, an Islamic charity based in Ashland, Calif., from using a top secret document to push forward its lawsuit challenging the government''s surveillance of that group."---
Yeah, I agree with everybody else''s assessments. The politicians make it sound like the exigent circumstances exception they''ve carved out is akin to the one for the 4th in criminal cases, but the guard against abuse of THAT loophole is that exigent circumstances actually exist in a way that police can later demonstrate in a court of law where those who have their privacy invaded are ultimately given their day in court. So like there''s transparency and consequences for those in power.
Here, the exigent circumstances exception seems more like the Iraq war whereby it grants Shrub the ability to do anything he wants and it doesn''t matter whether there''s justification to support his invasions into peoples privacy
Interesting to see we''re all united on this - red states and blue states - against the government.
Only idiots believe the new FISA law provides any wiretapping restraint whatsoever.
People must be laughing their heads off at the way the American people are completely played for fools by this law.
It doesn''t help that the news organizations like CBS couldn''t be bothered to tell people what the law says or actually means in practice.
Posted by CBS_Oliver at 08:38 AM : Jul 04, 2008
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It doesn''t help that the news organizations like CBS couldn''t be bothered to tell people what the law says or actually means in practice.
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Hey - just look at how the shrub interpreted the FISA act and you want CBS to be your legal eagles. Be thankful that we have the American Civil Liberties Union and CBS does report about their watchful eye...
Pelosi must go. A few pats on the head from Bushit, and she''s like a little lap dog. Dianne Feinstein ditto.
Still sucks being a fearful NeoCon...
JAIL Bush
Torture Cheney
Contribute to Anit-War hero Cindy Sheehan''s campaign!
www.cindyforcongress.org
Guess that proves that George doesn''t have the brains to be an idiot.
Bush, you are a good president.
His attempts to subvert the Constitution are thus doomed to fail.
If they do, they take the teeth out of the law and remove any deterrent from future illegal activities.
I would remind our readers that Quest defied the illegal requests of this administration.
The others should not be doing business.
Looks like this country''s future is getting brighter.
The 4th of July
Stands for FREEDOM
and HEROS who went to war
not AWOL coward NeoCons
Bush, you are a good president.
Posted by LJLJAZ at 10:39 AM : Jul 04, 2008
This power hungry imbecile isn''t good enough to preside over cow dung.
Thank you Judge Walker, at least someone knows something about that&^%#@% piece of paper we call the Constitution!
Bush, you are a good president.
Posted by LJLJAZ at 10:39 AM : Jul 04, 2008
Give me a break...
BTW - it''s ''their'' not ''there'' . I weep for the future.
Use common sense people.
Now if you could dumb it down to appeal to the Spongebob NeoCon crowd, we could move forward as a nation...
****************
Boy, you would like that, wouldn''t you? I mean, Bush was President and he had plenty of warning including when he was in Europe at one of the Big G-8 meetings and they wouldn''t even let planes fly because of the threat. Yet, your tin god let it all happen without winking not even once. And not once did you hold him responsible, not even for having the perps on a terrorist watchlist while roaming the country freely to learn how to fly planes and not land them.
Yep, you people like that kind of thing, don''t you?
Yeah
Use common sense people.
I believe you could use a good dose of common sense with a heaping helping of intelligence. What do you say of Bush, who was IN office on 9/11, and the fact that he was so engrossed with his "domestic" agenda that he didn''t know and really didn''t care about foreign threats brought to his attention by the outgoing Clinton Administration and his own appointees to head our intelligence agencies. Remember the infamous August 8, 2001, incident, when Bush was told that a foreign attack on the United States was imminent, but chose to stay in Crawford playing golf.
p_tx needs it explained more simply.
Oh! 9/11 happened during a republican presidency!
Look! 9/11 happened during a republican majority congress!
See! Over 4000 americans have died in iraq for nothing related to 9/11!
not sure if that''ll work, either...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Infinite_Reach
"The August 1998 bombings of Afghanistan and Sudan (code-named Operation Infinite Reach by the United States) were American cruise missile strikes on terrorist bases in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan on August 20, 1998. The attack was in retaliation for the bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania which killed 224 people (including 12 Americans) and injured 5,000 others."
BUT, led by hate-radio, the republican held congress was more interested in talking about Bill''s peniss.
How quickly you ''cons forget...
Truman refused to help the Vietmanese.
Eisenhower sent the first troops in''
Kennedy stayed the coarse.
Johnson made things worse.
Nixon finally stopped the madness when he saw it was tearing America apart.
All56,000 died for nothing.
No more dominos fell.
But the ''cons have forgotten that tragic lesson, and want to choke the US to death while they play games in Iraq.
actornaught at 11:30 AM
So now you have gone from blaming the reps to blaming the radio? ROFL! Thanks for bring that up. Demo Bill was way to busy getting his blow instead of worrying about Bin Laden.
Can anyone say what was accomplished here? Other than Judge Walker basically vacating his own ruling and forcing the plantiff to have no case?
Personally, I have NO problems with any over seas phone call being monitored, particularly middle east way ..
I hope all of you bleeding heart "progressives" (media included) get your wish and Obama the great black (maybe not 100%) hope wins in November .. maybe then we can stop the silly notion that America is perfect and we have no problems with our population.
We will then see how Obama and his minions handle the parts of the world that despised western culture well before bush took office .. Will all of you blame Obama for that? I doubt it ..
Your simple minded illusions that the world is ready to play nice is naive and dangerous ... we will all suffer from the stupidity and irresponsible election of a silver tongued devil who has illusions of grandeur on how persuasive his oratory skills will be with our sworn enemies ...
You all better start saving your pennies .. because after you elect Obama that''s all your going to have ... pennies and pain.
November will be the day of reckoning for all of us.
I answered your question, links and all, and you went off into irrelevant fantasyland.
You ''cons sure love talking about Bill''s peniss...
Bush thinks wiping your @ss with the constitution is an "executive privilege".
Liberals, no matter the circumstance, believe in a world utopia where peace is aquired wholly by capitulation to outside demands.
Nothing could be further from the truth, or more dangerous to believe.
This is why liberals have no place in America''s future - because with liberals making America policy, America will have no future.
Posted by OneAmerican- at 11:47 AM : Jul 04, 2008
This part of this post best describes the weird knee-jerk ''con-speak of the rest of the post.
Posted by patriot_tx1
And how many times since 911 has our military had Bin Laden in their scope and were told by the AWhite House to back off? Too many to count--which lends one to really believe, Bush never wanted to get Bin Laden in the first place--wonder why? Could it be that 911 was just a diversion to invade Iraq?
A real "patriot" doesn''t defend a deliberate killer and liar, that would make him complicit.
Posted by OneAmerican
And with the current neocons in power, there will be no America.
liberalme at 11:55 AM
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THANK YOU! You just described Obama to the T!
Posted by WDRussell1
So in other words, no President (current or next election) supports your position. Perhaps they know things you don''t, or recognize the tradeoff between the realities of national security needs and the ideological fantasies of the left wing.
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