Los Angeles Times
by staff

12/20/05

One of the perks of being commander in chief is that you get to edit the Constitution, even the Bill of Rights, from time to time. That is in essence the legal justification offered by the Bush administration for its authorization of a secret program to wiretap, without any court order, international communications of individuals within the United States suspected of ties to terrorist groups. ... 'The fact that we're discussing this program is helping the enemy,' Bush testily said at his Monday news conference. He then made much of the fact that the monitoring program, which bypasses the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act's requirement that investigators seek secret court warrants in national security cases, only applies to international communications, where one caller or e-mail correspondent is out of the country. 'So in other words,' Bush explained, 'this is not a -- if you're calling from Houston to L.A., that call is not monitored. And if there was ever any need to monitor, there would be a process to do that.' This distinction between international and domestic calls is perplexing. Americans in their own country do not waive their 4th Amendment right to privacy when they dial 011. Moreover, the distinction doesn't even make sense on the administration's own terms...

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Informant: Thomas L. Knapp