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Alberto: "President Washington, President Lincoln, President Wilson, President Roosevelt have all authorized electronic surveillance on a far broader scale."
Here's a video.
EXCUSE ME, but since when does ex-presidents doing something make it magically legal? Furthermore PRESIDENT WASHINGTON? PRESIDENT LINCOLN? WHAT DID WASHINGTON DO, HAVE THOMAS JEFFERSON AND BEN FRANKLIN ZAP A GUY WHILE ALEXANDER BELL SHOWED OFF A PROTOTYPE CELL PHONE?BIDEN: Thank you very much.
General, how has this revelation damaged the program?
I'm almost confused by it but, I mean, it seems to presuppose that these very sophisticated Al Qaida folks didn't think we were intercepting their phone calls.
I mean, I'm a little confused. How did it damage this?
GONZALES: Well, Senator, I would first refer to the experts in the Intel Committee who are making that statement, first of all. I'm just the lawyer.
And so, when the director of the CIA says this should really damage our intel capabilities, I would defer to that statement. I think, based on my experience, it is true -- you would assume that the enemy is presuming that we are engaged in some kind of surveillance.
But if they're not reminded about it all the time in the newspapers and in stories, they sometimes forget.
(LAUGHTER) My. God. I think we may get bipartisan support, to the extent that that exists, in the fight against this treachery:The Bush administration's domestic surveillance program to fight terrorism is under bipartisan attack, with U.S. senators demanding more answers from Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
At the end of Gonzales's eight hours of testifying yesterday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chairman Arlen Specter scolded him for claiming that the administration hadn't violated a 1978 law that created a special court to issue warrants for investigations of terrorists and spies.
``That just defies logic and plain English,'' said Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican. He said no ``realistic or fair reading'' of a congressional resolution enacted after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks suggested that lawmakers intended to give President George W. Bush power to order surveillance without a court warrant.
Gonzales defended the legality of a National Security Agency program that permits warrantless monitoring of phone calls and e- mails between people in the U.S. and suspected terrorists overseas. The attorney general provided the legal underpinnings for the program when he worked as White House counsel.
Members of Congress ``are feeling they need to reassert some of their authority that maybe the executive has claimed to itself,'' said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond in Virginia. ``It struck me that at least some senators who are Republicans were as concerned as Democrats.''
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