A friend wrote to ask me a couple of clarifying questions about my earlier posts on the national security NSA intercepts against US Persons here in the States. This was my reply.
Pat Lang
"NSA is a part of the military establishment and the foreign intelligence community. It does not normally operate in the USA because of the basic law concerning its existence into which congress wrote restrictions against such uses (with loopholes for extreme situations). It normally functions by receiving taskings from military commands and government departments who are listed in a big thick directive authorizing them to task NSA There is no talk of warrants, FISA courts, etc. because foreigners and their activities are not entitled by law to that protection.
The federal courts with their police helpers are very limited in their activities in all the ways that you already know.
So, when you call in the then Director of NSA, (DIRNSA) Lt. Gen. Haydon, USAF and tell him that he is to accept taskings within the US against US targets (presumably with some foreign connection) and you do not tell him that he is to follow the same laws and rules that the FBI would have to follow in listening in to the communications of US Persons, then he believes himself (correctly I think) to be released from all the restrictions that previously prevented him from doing that. Why? Because he is a military officer, head of a military agency, acting on the authority of the commander in chief in wartime. In other words, as far as DIRNSA was concerned Bush took the responsibility onto himself for doing something of doubtful legality and probity. So far as DIRNSA was concerned he, personally, was "off the hook."
What we then have is the American People being treated as targets by their own military in the same way that Soviet or Cuban targets were treated."
” In other words, as far as DIRNSA was concerned Bush took the responsibility onto himself for doing something of doubtful legality and probity. So far as DIRNSA was concerned he, personally, was “off the hook.”
Does anyone ever resign from government as a matter of conscience anymore?
I’d say DIRNSA is on safe ground. Although he may know the law, it is unwise to require him to interpret it at the same level as a judge.
His instinct (good!) will be to obey orders.
Of course this presumes that the order is not patently illegal.
Alvord,
I think the custom has died out. George Marshall, they are not.
PL
COL L and Alvord,
And this is exactly the reason we are in such a mess now. Way to many of our “leaders” (especially the military kind) have grown up in a system that values their personal loyalty over loyalty to thier country, a system that elevates personal relationships over the sworn oath to defend our Constitution.
Heck, I’d wager most of our high command could not even recite the preamble to the Constitution.
Lt Gen Hayden should have done the right thing up front – refuse the President’s illegal (and unconstitutional) order straight out. Barring that, I hope he received it in writing… that would be one hell of a damning document and future military ethics exhibit.
SP
SP
“An officer on duty has no friends.”
PL
Whatever their loyalties, the “f’ing crazies” [appear to] consider them unreliable. Quote after link is from article.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/wire/sns-ap-defense-doomsday-succession,1,5936454.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines
“WASHINGTON — The three military service chiefs have been dropped in the Bush administration’s doomsday line of Pentagon succession, pushed beneath three civilian undersecretaries in Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s inner circle.”