During Monday’s hearings, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales implied in his testimony that the US was at greater risk today, from terrorism, than the world was in 1976. The following quote was taken from the Washington Post transcript at U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Holds a Hearing on Wartime Executive Power and the NSA’s Surveillance Authority:
I might also say, this is a little different time, in terms of what existed in 1976. Of course, we are at war. And we have briefed certain members of Congress.
What could be more dangerous than tens of thousands of nuclear warheads aimed at our cities, military installations, and industry? What does the AG know about the current risks to our republic that we do not? I was perusing plot summaries for Fox’s drama 24 when it hit me: terrorists are known to have planted nuclear weapons in our country’s major cities and are planning to detonate. The only thing more dangerous than the risk of nuclear holocaust is the certainty of nuclear holocaust.
I’m joking of course. Gonzales didn’t mean to imply that the physical risk was greater. He probably just meant that the changes to telecommunications technologies over the past 30 years were so significant that FISA no longer applies. This is an interesting argument with considerable merit. It is unfortunate, then, that part of Gonzales’ defense of the wiretaps includes comparisons to the wartime actions of Washington, Lincoln, Wilson and Roosevelt.
Gonzales called Bush’s program part of “a long tradition of wartime enemy surveillance — a tradition that can be traced to George Washington, who made frequent and effective use of secret intelligence, including the interception of mail between the British and Americans.”
“And for as long as electronic communications have existed, the United States has conducted surveillance of those communications during wartime — all without judicial warrant. In the Civil War, for example, telegraph wiretapping was common, and provided important intelligence for both sides. In World War I, President Wilson ordered the interception of all cable communications between the United States and Europe.
“The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt authorized the interception of all communications traffic into and out of the United States,” Gonzales added.
So which is it? The same world or a new world?
