Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 4. februar 2006 / Time Line February 4, 2006
Version 3.53. Februar 2006, 5. Februar 2006
02/04/2006
Den tyske teolog og antinazist Dietrich Bonhoeffer
fødes, 1906.
02/04/2006
PROTEST AGAINST NATO NUCLEAR
POLICY 
Danmarks Sociale Forum / The Danish Social Forum, 19.00-21.00
lørdag 4 februar
Frederiksberg Gymnasium, Falkoner Plads 2, 2000 Frb
Indledere / introduction: Gunnar Westberg, IPPNW; Armin
Tenner, INES; André Mechelynk, Belgian Pugwash
Group
Removal of nuclear weapons from Europe
– background document.
02/04/2006
Wiretap Debate Déjà Vu : Electronic Surveillance:
From the Cold War to Al-Qaeda
Documents show Ford White House embraced wiretap law instead of
claiming "inherent" Presidential authority in 1976 despite
objections from Rumsfeld, G.H.W. Bush, Kissinger
Web posting includes Justice report on criminal liability for 1970s
warrantless wiretapping, 1990s directives on US surveillance
By the National Security Archive
Washington D.C., February 4, 2006 - Despite objections from
then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and then-CIA director
George H. W. Bush, President Gerald Ford came down on the side of a
proposed federal law to govern wiretapping in 1976 instead of
relying on the "inherent" authority of the President because the
"pros" outweighed the "cons," according to internal White House
documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act and
posted on the Web today by the National Security Archive at George
Washington University.
White House counsel Philip Buchen described a Situation Room
meeting on March 12, 1976 with Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger, Bush, national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, and
attorney general Edward Levi (notably absent was White House chief
of staff Richard Cheney) in which Buchen's and Levi's outline of
the advantages of a wiretapping law reduced the "adamant
opposition" to neutrality, allowing Levi to testify before Congress
in favor of a wiretapping statute on March 29, 1976.
Buchen's talking points said the proposed law (ultimately enacted
as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, or FISA)
"avoids likelihood that ... courts will eventually decide a warrant
is required," "eliminates question of validity of evidence
obtained," "protects cooperating communications carriers," and
would not "materially inhibit surveillance of these kinds of
targets."
On the "cons" side of his talking points, Buchen described exactly
the arguments against such a law that the Bush administration has
now adopted as the basis for its warrantless wiretapping: "requires
resort to the judiciary for exercise of an inherent Executive
power" and "could result in troublesome delays or even a denial of
authority in particular cases."
"Yogi Berra was right, the current wiretapping debate is
déjà vu all over again, except that President Bush
has come down on the con side against the law," remarked Thomas
Blanton, director of the National Security Archive.
Today's posting also includes the TOP SECRET Justice Department
reports in June 1976 and March 1977 on the potential criminal
liability of the National Security Agency and the Central
Intelligence Agency for operations such as SHAMROCK (interception
of all international cable traffic from 1945 to 1975) and MINARET
(use of watchlists of U.S. dissidents and potential civil
disturbers to provide intercept information to law enforcement
agencies from 1969 to 1973). Justice released these reports to
author James Bamford under the Freedom of Information Act in the
late 1970s, but in 1981, the NSA persuaded Justice to threaten
Bamford with prosecution for "possession of classified
information," a threat that helped Bamford's book The Puzzle Palace
become a best-seller.
The Justice Department in the reports ultimately recommended
against prosecution, concluding that "If the intelligence agencies
possessed too much discretionary authority with too little
accountability, that would seem to be a 35-year failing of
Presidents and the Congress rather than the agencies" (p. 171, 30
June 1976).
"Federal employees who are carrying out President Bush's
warrantless wiretapping will be especially interested in the
Justice Department's 1976 assessment of whether such wiretapping
makes them criminally liable," commented Blanton. "One of the main
reasons the Ford administration supported having a law that
governed wiretapping was that such a law would protect government
officials and the telecom companies as long as they followed the
law."
The Archive's posting, compiled by senior fellow Dr. Jeffrey
Richelson (author of the forthcoming book, Spying on the Bomb),
includes key historic documents brought to light by the Church
Committee investigations of intelligence abuses, and a series of
National Security Agency documents from the 1990s released under
the Freedom of Information Act that describe the limits imposed by
FISA and the Fourth Amendment on surveilling U.S. persons.
The posting also includes two important studies by the now-defunct
Office of Technology Assessment in 1985 and 1995 on the challenges
of electronic surveillance and civil liberties in a digital age, as
well as a wide range of key documents from the current wiretapping
debate, as featured on the Web sites of the Center for National
Security Studies http://www.cnss.org/fisa (complete legislative
history of the FISA), the Federation of American Scientists
http://www.fas.org (the Project on Government Secrecy has published
the relevant Congressional Research Service studies, among other
important documents), and the Electonic Privacy Information Center
http://www.epic.org which published the FBI's 2002 guide, "What do
I have to do to get a FISA?"
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