Letters to the Editor

• For Congress and the Media, Secrecy Equals Status and Import

  [Read the article: CNN's John Roberts helps out Mike McConnell]
  [Read more letters about this article: Here]

  Classified "secrets" obviously carry more import, or register more deeply, for many Members of Congress (not to mention most human beings) than do widely-known facts, just by virtue of their "secret" status alone, never mind their actual value. In fact, "national security" secrets often seem to trump the unclassified Constitution, even for many Senate Democrats. Even classified secrets which those members themselves are told they may not be privy to - perhaps especially because they are told that they may not be privy to them - seem to mightily impress these members far beyond the actual worth of the information itself, and out of all proportion to the information's relationship to our ability to defend our territory, or to safeguard the (limited) information that truly needs to be kept secret. Never mind the self-regard being 'in the know' tends to bring with it to so many of the self-promoting types in Congress. Would that those legislators had the ability to detect their built-in, but harmfully distorting, biases about the nature of classified information, and learn to work around them.

  Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid have that much going for them - they are at least privy to many of the secrets of the Intelligence Committees, even if they give them far too much weight simply because they are classified - by the very same bad faith, incompetent, utterly untrustworthy Executive Branch that is wielding misleading arguments based on those unmentionable secrets over their heads like a weapon.

  So if the (almost too good to be believed) stand of Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, et al, today on FISA and the PAA continues, all credit to Pelosi and Hoyer for finally choosing to walk right into the heart of the bullying White House/Republican Party/corporate media threat rhetoric which has been used against them and us so abusively to achieve nefarious Executive Branch ends under the guise of "classified national security" concerns, for years now. Their refusal to back down should also help push Bush's brinksmanship over FISA onto the public airwaves at last, where public pressure will be overwhelmingly favorable to the House's (and Dodd's) principled positions, if their public statements continue to be as informed and well-prepared as they were today.

  As Harry Reid's letter today states, it is indeed "reckless" and irresponsible for public servants to mislead or to needlessly alarm the American people concerning facts about which we are deliberately kept in the dark, but particularly so when that deception is in pursuit of private profit or their own personal protection from public scrutiny and legal jeopardy. A responsible, trustworthy, honorable chief executive (or administrator or legislator) does not take advantage of secret "national security" information to amass power, manipulate public opinion, or to play political games with the representatives of the people.

  Three cheers for the drafter of this letter:

  As someone who has been briefed on our most sensitive intelligence programs, I can see no argument why the future security of our country depends on whether past actions of telecommunications companies are immunized.

  The issue of telecom liability should be carefully considered based on a full review of the documents that your Administration withheld from Congress for eight months. However, it is an insult to the intelligence of the American people to say that we will be vulnerable unless we grant immunity for actions that happened years ago.

  [snip]

  I, for one, do not intend to back down - not to the terrorists and not to anyone, including a President, who wants Americans to cower in fear.

  We are a strong nation. We cannot allow ourselves to be scared into suspending the Constitution. If we do that, we might as well call the terrorists and tell them that they have won.

  Sincerely,

  Silvestre Reyes

  [Chair, House Intelligence Committee]

  Http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/2/14/163122/339/752/456892

  As Bryan Wildenthal rightly emphasizes here, the Judicial Branch is all about enforcement - of the Constitution and the rule of law. Without enforcement, without being compelled to cooperate with legally-authorized spying in America, or compelled to cease illegally-authorized spying in America, private sector contractors secretly partnered with our government have zero incentive to act in accordance with FISA and/or the Fourth Amendment, and the rule of law in those areas thus becomes meaningless and a fraud.

  The steps that Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer have started to publicly take today are about enforcing the Constitution and giving it meaning - enforcement without which the Constitution indeed exists as little more than a piece of parchment decorated with some elegant old penmanship.

  Pat Leahy - are you capable of standing up to your demanding, authoritarian colleague Mr. Rockefeller and his White House backers, to defend your Judiciary Committee immunity-free FISA bill in principled alignment with Reyes and Conyers and their House RESTORE Act? It's time to step up to the plate for your country.

  Permalink Thursday, February 14, 2008 03:32 PM