The real reason to kill The Patriot Act?
Posted by Moonage on 22 Dec 2005 | Tagged as: Opinions
Without having anything to go on, I think the root of the oppositin to The Patriot Act is seeded a lot deeper than "the wiretap scandal". You have to go back about a decade to understand the chain of events that led to this current debate IMO. I did a synopsis over "what went wrong" in regards to 911 during the 911 Commission investigation. I think it does a good job setting the stage for the rest of my assumption. From a post I made on The Motley Fool on June 4, 2002:
http://www.loyola.edu/dept/politics/intel/wh-19940504.txt
Start by reading this, if you want. If you don’t want to read it, then ignore the rest of what I have to say on this topic, because it won’t make any sense. It doesn’t make a lot of sense any way.
May 4, 1994, the ever diligent policy wonk of a president signed into effect by executive order, ergo by-passing Congress, the "U. S. Counterintelligence Effectiveness Executive Order 12333". This is the synopsis:
The President’s decision to take these significant steps of restructuring U.S. counterintelligence policy and interagency coordination, followed a Presidential Review of U.S. counterintelligence in the wake of the Aldrich Ames espionage investigation. The President, in issuing this Directive, has taken immediate steps to improve our ability to counter both traditional and new threats to our nation’s security in the post-Cold War era.
Executive Order 12333 designates the National Security Council (NSC) "as the highest Executive Branch entity that provides review of, guidance for and direction to the conduct of," among other things, counterintelligence policies and programs. Consistent with E.O. 12333, the President directed the creation of a new CI structure, under the direction of the NSC, for the coordination of CI policy matters in order to integrate more fully government-wide counterintelligence capabilities, to foster greater cooperation among the various departments and agencies with CI responsibilities and to establish greater accountability for the creation of CI policy and its execution. This new structure will ensure that all relevant departments and agencies have a full and free exchange of information necessary to achieve maximum effectiveness of the U.S. counterintelligence effort, consistent with U.S. law.
OK, so now let’s figure out who the National Security Council is that governs that policy making board:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/
The National Security Council is chaired by the President. Its regular attendees (both statutory and non-statutory) are the Vice President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Defense, and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the statutory military advisor to the Council, and the Director of Central Intelligence is the intelligence advisor. The Chief of Staff to the President, Counsel to the President, and the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy are invited to attend any NSC meeting. The Attorney General and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget are invited to attend meetings pertaining to their responsibilities. The heads of other executive departments and agencies, as well as other senior officials, are invited to attend meetings of the NSC when appropriate.Clinton’s order, basically gave power to the NSC that it had since 1947 when Truman enacted it, however, expanded it to include just about anybody he wanted on the council. ( What does the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy have to offer in regards to counterintelligence and national security? ). However, he also gave policy making authority to the NSC whereas it had been done inside the various departments in the past.
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nspd/nspd-1.htm
This is the current structure of the NSC. I would quote the line that coordinates policy, but if you read it, there were a myriad of sub-committees that had policy making authority. I can see where this is confusing as hell. At the bottom of that link you will see how Bush re-organized it once again, stripping the policy making authority into very streamlined lines of authority. This looks like a very good move to me. However, I digress…..http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/NSChistory.htm#Clinton
Clinton’s first act as President was to appoint members to the NSC.
On January 21, 1993, in PDD 2, President Clinton approved an NSC decision-making system that enlarged the membership of the National Security Council and included a much greater emphasis on economic issues in the formulation of national security policy..The National Security Council framework in the Clinton administration included an NSC Principals Committee, a forum available to Cabinet-level officials to discuss and resolve issues not requiring the President’s participation…
Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, a longtime foreign policy adviser to Clinton…. became National Security Adviser in March 1997…. Berger initiated a review of principles that would guide the foreign policy of Clinton’s second term. These included the integration of Eastern and Western Europe without provoking tensions with Russia; promoting more open trade; improving defenses against such transnational threats as terrorism and narcotics; and promoting a strong and stable Asian-Pacific community by seeking trade cooperation with China and avoiding confrontation on human rights issues. In the spring and summer of 1997, the National Security Council became occupied with such issues as the ratification of the Chemical Weapons Treaty, NATO enlargement, the Middle East peace process, the U.S-Russian Summit at Helsinki, and the Denver Economic Summit.
OK, let’s look at Sandy Berger:
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/white_house/march97/berger_3-27.html
From an interview with Margaret Warner shortly after being appointed:
I don’t need to know everything, nor should I–should they feel compelled to pass everything up the line.This part just blows me away:
MARGARET WARNER: Attorney General Reno today defended the FBI’s decision to refuse your NSC’s request for some counter-intelligence information about China’s alleged attempts to subvert the U.S. election, and this was information you’re asking for, for Madeleine Albright, the Secretary of State, before her first trip to China. Now, are you–are you comfortable with that? How do you feel about that, that the FBI would not give you the information?SAMUEL (SANDY) BERGER: Well, the FBI is in a difficult position. Obviously, it has a law enforcement responsibility and a need to preserve the integrity of that law enforcement process. I would hope when there are matters touching on national security that there would be a willingness to share that information to the extent they deem appropriate.
OK, so Sandy Berger is the Director of the National Security Council, which coordinates information and policy of the FBI, the FBI immediately refuses to give the NSC information it has requested, and Janet Reno says that’s ok. Along the same lines, I never knew the FBI was law "enforcement", I was always under the impression they simply investigated. I know how the political process works, and how subordinates think and work. Janet Reno’s act right there gutted the authority of the NSC, which is the entity that is supposed to coordinate the FBI and CIA. If the NSC is unable to enforce its authority, then neither agency will feel compelled to respond to it. Therefore, there really is no policy authority for those agencies. Since Clinton placed a stop-gap between himself and the policy making board, and Berger did not feel compelled to stay on top of issues, and Janet Reno felt she had more authority over the FBI than the FBI’s policy making board, I can see how things got to where they did. Reno had already had a history of enforcing rights over the law ( see Gonzalez for a good example ), so I can see where a director within the FBI, who having no support from his policy making board, would not allow the potential violation of a person’s rights even though they were a foreign national and Clinton had signed a previous executive order allowing it. They were being directed by Janet Reno, not the President or the Director of the National Security Council, and Janet Reno was not their supervisor. That’s screwed.
And to beat it all, the lawsuit that emasculated the NSC was over Albright’s efforts to normalize relations with China, at Diane Feinstein’s insistence. And now Feinstein wants to know what went wrong. Give me a break. I hope she finds out. If Congress can’t figure it out for her, I’ll give her a call myself.
I may have gotten some parts of this wrong, but I can’t see how anyone can get it right.
The post is long, and full of related material. But, what it boils down to, and I’ve read this other places as well, is the Clinton was a master at CYA. What he did was basically get EVERYONE involved so that NO one person could pin the blame on him. Pretty much the very first thing Bush did as President was to re-organize the NSC. He stripped it down, made it simpler, and cut a LOT of people ( read Senators ) out of the loop. People like Boxer, Feinstein, Feingold, and others who were in the know were suddenly not. To me, that explains the almost bizarre logic Feingold is using to attack The Patriot Act ( I pick on Feingold because he’s opposed The Patriot Act from day one. ). He’s muddling all together into one big issue, as did Dahlia Lithwick. I don’t really think with these people it’s an issue of The Patriot Act. It’s an issue of having one person in charge of our security that they don’t like. I stated in a previous post that some of these people want our security returned to 9/10/01 mentality. I think now I underestimated that opinion. They want our country, read President, returned to 11/01/2000.
That STILL led up to 9/11. These people need to be stopped.
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