quote:

"...The Supreme Court has rejected the very claims being made by the President with regard to the NSA operation. This operation falls under what Justice Jackson referred to as the lowest possible exhibit in terms of executive authority. It is in direct contradiction of FISA.

"Now, I want to be absolutely clear. What the President ordered in this case was a crime.

"We can debate whether he had a good or bad motivation, but it was a crime.

"Federal law makes it clear you cannot engage in this type of surveillance, in a domestic surveillance operation, without committing a crime and that you can go to jail for 5 years.

"Now, we can debate the wisdom of that. We can debate why the President may have done it.

"But, in my view, the President committed a crime, and we have to deal with that as citizens and, unfortunately, you have to deal with that as Members of Congress.

"It gives me no pleasure to say that, but it also strikes me as an alarming circumstance when the President can go into a press conference and announce that he has violated a Federal statute 30 times and promises to continue to do so until someone stops him.

"That's the most remarkable admission I've ever heard from a President of the United States." ...

[brief discussion of FISA warrant requirements and NSA as watchdog on President's exceeding their authority]

"... Well, this President has exceeded his authority.

"Under FISA there are three exceptions that allow the President to, in one case, engage in surveillance and proceed later to get approval. The suggestion that time was of the essence is a ludicrous one.

"I have reduced the White Paper by the Justice Department into five central claims, all of which, frankly, I believe is meritless. The first and most important is that the President has inherent authority to violate Federal law and the Fourth Amendment. That is the most dangerous claim of all.

"Historically, our most serious wounds as a Nation have been self-inflicted wounds. They have been done when we have been afraid. They have not been done by external evil forces. We did it to ourselves. And the way that that happens is when we remain passive and silent in the face of unchecked authority.

"If you take a look at these claims - and I won't go through them because time is limited here. I will simply remind this institution of its duty.

"The Framers believed that, despite any affiliation to the President, Congress would jealously protect its authority. It's a duty to protect a legacy that you were given and all citizens were given.

"What's at stake is not a President who has committed crimes. It's much more serious than that. What's at stake is a President who is committing crimes in a name or a pretense of legality. He is saying that he has the authority to do that.

"Now, members that stay silent are making a choice. Very few members have faced this type of test of faith. But you are facing it now, and as citizens and as members, it's now up to us.

"We're called to account to the many benefits that we have gotten from this system. We're called to account to do something and not to remain silent."

quote:

"This growing constitutional crisis will call upon members of this body to take a stand. The Framers expected that, even when affiliated politically with a president, Congress would act to protect its own institutional authority and to preserve the integrity of the tripartite system of governance. Thus far, while the judiciary has been asserting its independence and authority vis-à-vis the President, it is not clear that this trust was well-placed in Congress. These are dangerous times for our constitutional system. It is often the case that our greatest threats come from within. Indeed, Justice Brandeis warned the nation to remain alert to the encroachments of men of zeal in such times:

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasions of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachments by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

"Members should not engage in the dangerous delusion that they can remain silent and thus remain uncommitted in this crisis. Remaining silent is a choice; it is a choice to permit the assertion of raw, unchecked authority by a single individual.

"I hope that members of this branch will heed the call of the Framers to act to preserve the vital balance of power in our system. What is at stake is not merely the issue of a president committing federal crimes, but a president who commits such crimes under a claim of absolute authority. It is far more dangerous when crimes are committed under the false pretense of legality. It is an abuse of power that can corrode a system from within. It can lure other branches into a dangerous passivity and to eventual obsolescence. Few members of Congress have faced such a challenge in their careers. Yet, I believe that we are all (citizens and members alike) now called to account for the many benefits that we have received from our constitutional system."

quote:

"In November of 2004, people who represented an association of religious, educational, environmental, peace and social justice activists met at the Quaker Meeting House in Lake Worth, Florida. This group formed The Truth Project, Inc., a Florida non-profit corporation whose purpose is to help educate high school students and their parents about military service and to give them enough accurate information to make informed choices about critical decisions..."

"The Quakers welcomed us into their church, because they believed our intent was non-violent and was in keeping with their deeply-felt beliefs of teaching peace and understanding. They knew our purpose was solely to exercise our First Amendment Rights to assemble peacefully, speak freely, and worship as we choose.

"We had no idea until one year later that the unfamiliar faces in the church had been sent by the President ’s Department of Defense to spy on us; NBC News investigators showed us that agents of the 902nd Military Intelligence Group from Fort Meade, MD, where the National Security Agency is headquartered, infiltrated the Quaker Meeting House, and then filed a report designating us a CREDIBLE THREAT. The president ’s agents DID NOT come to worship alongside us, to help us plan our educational program, or to protect us.

"And it wasn ’t just us. Shortly after NBC aired its report, churches and other groups began sharing their experiences of infiltration and intimidation with us. Saint Maurice’s Catholic Church in Dania, the Unitarian Universalists, the Fort Lauderdale Friends, members of Pax Christi in West Palm Beach, environmental groups, and many others.

"Agents rummaged through trash, attacked and snooped into email, hacked web sites, and listened in on phone conversations. Indeed, address books and activist meeting lists have disappeared.

"President Bush tells us only a few phone calls are listened to, but THAT ’S NOT TRUE.

"Mr. Bush says they only monitor calls to foreign countries, but THAT is ABSOLUTELY untrue.

"He tells us that he spies only on known Al-Qaida contacts or affiliates, but I know for a fact that is NOT TRUE, because I was spied on in a house of worship IN THE UNITED STATES, and in private homes in Florida where I was meeting with other peaceful persons engaged in constitutionally-protected activity.

"I HAVE EVERY REASON TO BELIEVE that the federal government listens to my phone calls to family members and friends about purely personal matters.

"I have every reason to believe that the president’s agents READ my e-mail, PHOTOGRAPH me as I exercise my Constitutional Rights, RECORD the license numbers of cars I ride in, and CREATE huge databases with information about me and my fellow activists, BECAUSE all of this specific activity is on record, from government files, as having been visited on American citizens, around the United States, by members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, the FBI, the NSA and other agencies.

"If as George Orwell once said, 'In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act, '  we members of the Truth Project, Inc., must be revolutionaries.

"I thought Congress passed safeguards against indiscriminate domestic spying after the gross violations of citizens ’ rights during the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam peace activism.

"But here we are again. Like the Church Committee.

"Today, I think President Bush should confess the true extent of his domestic spying program.

"Confession is good for the soul.

"I think HE should tell the truth.

"That truth shall set us all free."

quote:

"With no longer any FISA buffer between the NSA eavesdroppers and the American public, anyone’s communications can be targeted. Once a name is placed secretly on NSA’s watchlist, it will likely be sent not only to other agencies within the United States, but also to NSA’s partner agencies in the U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

"And like India ink, there is no removal.

"Five years later, when an innocent target attempts to get a new mortgage or take a trip to England, they may be turned down or turned away, with no explanation given. Who is a target would also likely change as administrations change.

"Today it might be a Muslim who demonstrates against the Bush administration ’s war in Iraq.But next time it could be a Christian fundamentalist belonging to an international anti-abortion group.

"Such thoughts were not far from Frank Church’s mind when he warned, 'I don ’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge. I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.' ”

quote:

"...it is crucial to remember that this is not an isolated incident. The Bush administration has a clear record of hostility toward basic constitutional norms and democratic values. There is a pattern and practice of abuse, and the NSA scandal must be seen in this context.

"Even a few examples suffice to bring this unfortunate record into sharp relief.

"The clearest indication of the White House's disdain for fundamental American freedoms, aside from the NSA scandal, has to be the Patriot Act. For more than four years, reasonable men and women from both sides of the aisle have called on the White House to accept modest changes to the Patriot Act to better balance national security and constitutional liberties. The answer has been a categorical "no."

"In addition, the Pentagon has been spying and maintaining files on Americans exercising their first amendment rights.

"And so is the FBI. As part of an ACLU FOIA effort in twenty states on behalf of over 100 domestic political and religious groups, the ACLU received numerous documents confirming that the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Forces are investigating peaceful activists who work on issues ranging from affirmative action, animal and environmental rights, and opposition to the Iraq war.

"The White House and Department of Defense have used the tragedy of 9/11 to create a legal framework justifying coercive interrogations and torture as well as to short circuit judicial review of its actions.

"On the topic of domestic surveillance and privacy rights, this is the same administration that had retired Rear Admiral John Poindexter develop the Total Information Awareness data-mining system at the Pentagon. That program was supposed to track in real time the electronic footprints of presumably every individual in the United States."

quote:

I want to echo the remarks made by people today about the abdication of the constitutional responsibility of the House of Representatives in failing to hold any formal hearings, and such formal hearings would conduct oversight over this program and are necessary not only to protect our basic civil liberties but, in addition, to ensure that the departments inside the executive branch are, in fact, engaging in effective counterterrorism activities and not once again going down the path looking at easy and perhaps politically unpopular targets while missing those who would actually do us harm, and that oversight which the House of Representatives to date has refused to engage in is necessary for both purposes.

... the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in three different ways prohibits the President from conducting wiretapping outside of the four corners of that act and criminal wiretap statutes ... whether or not the President had inherent authority to conduct warrantless wiretaps outside of those statutes was considered during the 2 years in which Congress debated and then enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and expressly rejected by the Congress at the time.

The President's signed the bill, and there was no statement that that limitation was unconstitutional.

... the question of whom and when to wiretap on Americans inside the United States is a matter that the Constitution specifically commits to more than one branch when, in the Fourth Amendment, it states that searches and seizures require a warrant, and that warrant is to be issued by the judiciary branch.

So the claim here of inherent authority is structurally contradicted by the Constitution itself, which says that the power to conduct searches and seizures belongs in part to the judiciary, as well as to the Congress, which here has set the standards for the judiciary to apply in issuing warrants.

...we should not forget that it is not simply a claim that the President has the sole power to decide which laws to violate and when to go outside the judicial power, but that he has the power to do so in secret.

Remember that until the New York Times reviewed this program, he withheld the fact from the American people that his view was that FISA did not limit his powers.

He secretly believed that he had broader authority than was laid out in the public statutes, but he withheld and misled the American people about that view of his own powers. ...

One thing I would urge you to do is to examine what kind of misleading statements, if not deception, were put before the Congress in connection with this program.

We were assured repeatedly that Americans' privacy was safe because there were checks and balances in place and the administration was following the law.

We all understood the law to be that which was publicly enacted, when it turned out that the administration with a wink and a nod has apparently deemed there to be some kind of secret law and then misled the American people and the Congress in what that law and what those authorities were.

Just one final comment on that.

The President has claimed that the secrecy was necessary for national security reasons to prevent al Qaeda from knowing that we were wiretapping them. That claim is absurd on its face, I submit to you.

From day one, before 9/11, al Qaeda knew that we were trying to wiretap them, as we should be doing. Al Qaeda knew that the PATRIOT Act was about amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to make it easier to wiretap on al Qaeda.

It makes no difference to al Qaeda whether or not they're being wiretapped with a warrant or without a warrant.

[Laughter.]

It makes a difference to the American people whether or not the President is engaging in wiretaps of Americans without a warrant, and that, I submit to you, is most likely the justification for keeping this program secret.