This past week, United States Attorney General Alberto Gonzales took questions from a panel of Senators. These Senators were demanding an explanation for the Bush Administration’s decision to tap the phones of suspected terrorists without a warrant. Basically, Gonzales’ position can be summed up with an excerpt from a speech he gave at Georgetown University. He said that “the President has constitutional authority to engage in the surveillance of our enemy in a time of war — and that’s what we’re talking about here.” Unfortunately for Gonzales, the law states otherwise. In 1978, Congress passed a law designed to regulate wiretapping. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act details the procedure for legally conducting wiretaps.The law mandates that the federal government must receive a warrant from a court to conduct a wiretap. To expedite this process, the law also created a secret court expressly designed to accommodate and quickly process requests for warrants. Additionally, the law allows the government to carry out wiretaps in “extreme situations” for up to 72 hours without seeking a warrant. Why then, doesn’t the government simply follow the law expressly designed for such situations? Gonzales’ answer seems to be, “because we don’t have to.” Gonzales cites as evidence the 2001 resolution passed by Congress granting the President the authority “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States.” Gonzales claims that this annuls the provisions of the 1978 law. He said during the hearing that they did “not go to the FISA court, once the determination was made that neither the Constitution nor FISA prohibited the use of this tool” because the President must decide “which of the tools is appropriate given a particular circumstance.” This attitude is counterproductive and betrays the Bush Administration’s contempt for the laws of our land. If we determine that we aren’t violating any laws, then why don’t we just go ahead and do whatever we want, they seem to be saying. This runs counter to what we believe as a nation and what we have established in our constitution. The fourth amendment states that all citizens are free from “unreasonable searches and seizures.” An unwarranted search is by definition unreasonable. The Administration’s reluctance to comply with the law is even more baffling in light of the fact that obtaining a legal warrant from the FISA courts is fast and bureaucracy-free. The process is designed to quickly review cases and issue rulings. In fact, over the history of the law, the court has approved thousands of warrants while only rejecting a handful. It is a sad day for America when our Attorney General, the nation’s highest law enforcement official, toes his party’s line and refuses to admit the truth about the legality of his government’s programs. Traditionally, the attorney general has been a bastion of justice and truth. Of course, in the current administration, first with John Ashcroft and now with Alberto Gonzales, we have men who are not committed to the high ideals laid out by our nation’s fathers. Rather, they are committed loyalists to George Bush and the GOP. They are afraid to be anything but sycophants and are afraid to do anything except exactly what their boss tells them. Hopefully, our nation’s future Attorneys General will stay loyal to the law and their position.
