February 8, 2006
Cheney Emerges From His Undisclosed Location To Defend Bush Spying
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
From the DNC:
Washington, DC - Yesterday, during an interview with Jim Lehrer of the Newshour, Vice President Dick Cheney followed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' misleading and groundless assertions about President Bush's domestic warrantless wiretapping program. Cheney repeated the White House talking point that, "we believe firmly that ... we have all the legal authority we need with respect to the NSA program." [Newshour with Jim Lehrer, 2/7/06]
Yet, according to numerous legal scholars, the Administration's rationale for spying on calls, including those involving American citizens, is deeply flawed. According to the Washington Post, while "Bush administration officials have taken great pains to emphasize that the effort involves only international telephone calls and e-mails," many scholars and even Republican lawmakers have asked, "Why stop there? Why not intercept domestic calls, as well?" There are also questions about why the Bush Administration argues that the FISA process works well for some cases, but not those instances where the secret NSA program is utilized, even "though the process differs little, if at all." Critics of the President's secret program contend that such reasoning is "confusing, and question why the statute is 'cumbersome and burdensome,' in Gonzales's words, only for cases involving international calls." [Washington Post, 2/8/06]
"Vice President Cheney's emergence from his undisclosed location to defend an unpopular Bush Administration policy is not new, and neither is his parroting of the White House's unpersuasive defense of their possibly illegal domestic wiretapping program," said Democratic National Committee Communications Director Karen Finney. "Democrats believe that we should spy on terrorists and that we must win the war on terror. We also believe that when the President breaks the law, it makes it harder to catch our enemies and its hurts our democracy."
A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT