Mythology 101

"If there are people inside our country talking with al Qaeda, we want to know about it, because we will not sit back and wait to be hit again."
--Vice President Dick Cheney, speaking to the Conservative Political Action Committee

"President Bush believes that if al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national interest to know who they are calling and why. Some important Democrats clearly disagree."
--Karl Rove, speaking to the Republican National Committee

"Our enemy is listening."
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, during Senate hearings.


For the past, oh, three or four weeks, I have been doing in-depth research into this whole domestic spying--oh, excuse me, I forgot. We're supposed to say TERRORIST spying now--the White House has been very clear on that terminology.

I just want to get it right.

I've done the same kind of research I use when writing a book, and have downloaded and collected so many different treatments of the subject that I've had to create a filing system: Constitutional Issues, Technological Information, Political Ramifications, History of, and, my favorite, Spy Agency Data Dead Ends.

I realized fairly quickly that this issue is far too complex and complicated to be boiled down to simplistic terms like, oh, say, You either want us to do our jobs to protect the American people by tracking down al Qaeda on United States soil…OR you're some wimpy card-carrying ACLU type who thinks our so-called "privacy" is more important because you don't care if another 9-11 happens here and, obviously can't be trusted to see to it that that does not happen, and that, furthermore, even discussing it gives aid and comfort to the enemy.

That about sum it up?

At first, I had so much information gathered that I thought I was going to have to do another five or six-part series, the way I did the Iraqi war, in order to explain to my readers what, say, ADVISE means (Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement), or "dataveillance", or "signals intelligence"--which relates to technology--or go into such terms as "constitutional avoidance" and "Marbury v Madison"--which relate to Constitutional and legal matters--or explain how, out of say, 5,000 wiretaps, FBI officials admit that maybe only TEN ever actually turn out to be worth serious investigation, and out of those ten, so far, NOT A SINGLE ONE HAS RESULTED IN AN ARREST--or, define "Dutch Cleanser,"--a term used by Republican Senator Arlen Spector in reference to what the attorney general must be smoking if he thinks all this stuff is legal.

*(Note to the Senator: I don't think they make Dutch Cleanser any more, and I'm not even sure how one would go about smoking it, but we get your point.)

But the deeper I dug and the more time passed, the more I realized that most of the American people--including, no doubt, a cross-section of my readers--just don't really care all that much about this issue. At least, not enough to read even a SUMMARY of all the information that explains its details.

And the reason they don't care is that they have already begun to fall into that peculiar hypnotic trance I've seen before whenever this administration's spin machine gets started. Aided and betted by an eager television news media accustomed to presenting complicated issues in simplistic two-minute sound bites, most harried and hurried people just go ahead and swallow whole whatever mythology that is presented to them.

Which boils down to, once again, ARE YOU FOR US OR AGAINST US?

Do you want al Queda terrorists calling your neighbor and getting away with it so they can plan their latest bombing on American soil, or are you worried about your privacy?

And OF COURSE, we all want al Qaeda terrorists to be caught by any means necessary, and if, well, it means the government listens in on us giving hubby our grocery list over the phone well, then, so be it. We just don't care IF IT KEEPS US SAFE.

Most people simply don't GET that the president has been authorized all along to wiretap anyone the FBI or NSA seems to think is up to no good, for any reason, any time. It has always been so.

This is not an EITHER-OR issue. And the White House knows it.

In 1978, a secret court was created for one reason, and one reason only--to oversee domestic spying, or terrorist spying, or whatever frightening term you want to give it. The court exists strictly at the president's whim, and over the years, has swiftly approved literally tens of thousands of wiretaps on American soil of American citizens.

After 9-11, the White House asked Congress if, rather than going to the court first, they could go ahead and start data sweeps and wiretaps and come back, say, within 72 hours if they thought there was anything of significance. Congress agreed to the request immediately and with no debate.

(I've seen at least one former head of the NSA, Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, proclaim the 72-hour leeway an "urban myth." But Attorney General Alberto Gonzales told Senator Arlen Spector that yes, the 72-hour rule did indeed apply. But Gonzales was speaking before the Senate. Hayden was on a nationally televised Sunday talk show. He could spin the mythology--or LIE--outright and nobody would check him on it, and it would make the Internet rounds. Same as Dick Cheney claiming on a Sunday news program that "thousands and thousands" of lives had been saved thanks to illegal wiretaps.)

Congress then offered to change the laws in order to expedite wiretaps and serve at the needs of the president no less than FIVE times, but the attorney general refused.

They were refused because this administration didn't neeeeed no steeeenkin' legal, Constitutional, or Congressional oversight because they were already listening in on whomever, whenever, and how-long ever they wanted.

We don't know exactly how many because all they have to do is throw up the scare-words NATIONAL SECURITY to claim that they can't say.

When they claim that other presidents have done so in the name of national security, they are always very careful never to mention Richard Nixon, whose abuses were so legendary that the secret court had to be created, back in 1978, under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA.

We now know that Nixon routinely used Herbert Hoover's FBI to spy on anyone he considered an enemy, which included war protesters, politicians who were opposing him in elections, journalists, and Civil Rights activists, among others.

This is why our founding fathers insisted upon "checks and balances" between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of our government--so that unscrupulous leaders could not use their almost unlimited power to spy on ordinary Americans and use what they learned to garner for themselves greater power.

This administration claims that they're only listening in to conversations of potential al Qaeda operatives--hence, the "terrorist spying" moniker--but according to the FBI, they were so FLOODED with requests for wiretaps and data traps from the White House and NSA that they became almost overwhelmed, (estimates run in the thousands) tying up hundreds of agents for literally tens of thousands of man-hours trying to investigate them all.

And although Vice President Cheney claims "thousands and thousands" of lives have been saved by going around the FISA courts to spy on Americans, the FBI says that, so far, they have not made a single arrest.

And the Pentagon, which was doing the same thing until just recently, openly admitted that many innocent Americans were caught up in the sweep.

So, what about all the scary stories we've been hearing about terrorist plots that have been thwarted?

Law enforcement thwarts terrorist plots every day in this country. Of course, we don't hear about it because it's not their job to notify the media when they have a success (we'll leave that up to the president)--but the point is that the wiretaps that MAY or MAY NOT have led to the thwarting of the said plots could very well have been put in place by the FISA court, legally and swiftly, within a couple days of the request. (We can only hope that they were, since now that we know some of the wiretaps were ILLEGAL, then the information obtained in them was classic "fruit of the poison tree" and INADMISSABLE IN COURT.)

So, here's how MYTHOLOGY 101 works:

(1) Do whatever you want in secret until you are caught. (2) Immediately attack whoever caught you and investigate them for breaching national security. (3) Go before the American people and put the issue in incredibly simple EITHER-OR terms that have nothing to do with truth or accuracy. (4) Come up with simplistic catch-phrases and repeat, repeat, repeat. (5) If it does not appear to be working, attack those who oppose you as being weak and downright dangerous. (6) If that does not work, then whip out the fear bludgeon, making broad claims of how, if it weren't for you doing whatever you were doing in secret before you got caught, we would all be dead by now. (7) Say anything that backs up your claims--true or false--on national television news interviews where you are not likely to be caught on it. (8) Spread your quotes far and wide on the Internet and in friendly publications so you will look strong and resolute (9) When confronted with the truth, hide behind the terms, "national security," or "ongoing investigation." (10) When flat-out backed up against the wall, say you are "looking forward, not past."


There is no doubt that, with technology advancing at such a breathless pace, Congress needs to re-examine such laws as relate to wiretapping, because data sweeps are so much more all-encompassing these days, involving e-mails and text messages and disposable cell phones and so on that did not even exist in 1978.

And, certainly, the war on terror does change the nature of law enforcement to some extent. But this country has remained strong for more than 200 years by relying on the bedrock of the Constitution, which has withstood many a terrible challenge. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights were written, in the first place, to protect Americans from a self-serving executive branch who, in the name of "trust me," could do anything, anywhere, any time, that they wanted.

If this president thinks that the newly-named long war on terror gives him the right to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants and to whomever he wants in the name of "national security," then what is to prevent him from using that logic to spy on…oh…John Kerry? Or Howard Dean? Or Hillary Clinton?

Maybe he would decide that they would not do as good a job as he could, or as his hand-picked successor could, and would therefore be DANGEROUS and a THREAT TO OUR NATIONAL SECURITY. Maybe he would no longer trust that the American electorate would know what is best for them, and could then use whatever information he gleaned to manipulate the public into believing only what he wanted them to believe. Only Father knows best.

And if you think I'm being a paranoid liberal…okay…then how would you feel if, say, President Hillary Rodham Clinton had unlimited powers to do whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted, and to whomever she wanted, in the name of "national security"--with no checks and balances and no oversight because, well, Mother knows best. (Just trust her.)

This past Sunday, I was stunned to see arch-conservative columnist George Will state, flat-out, that this president has more of a monarchy than a presidency. And even more surprised to see that he was none too happy about it.

But the truth of the matter is that a growing number of Congressional Republicans and thinking conservatives (not just Democrats) are uncomfortable knowing that, once the American people--and Congress--become so complacent, or so frightened--by whatever mythology is shrink-wrapped and presented to us, that we enable the executive branch to assume the powers of a defacto monarchy…then we should expect that monarchy, no matter who is in the White House, to eventually abuse that privilege. It is the nature of power.

Hence, those pesky little checks and balances.